NASA Funds Titan Seaplane Ideas and Faster Deep Space Travel
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program promotes innovation by funding early research to evaluate technologies that can support future missions. The latest round of awards will provide $175,000 in grants to 14 visionaries from nine states. Ten of the selected investigators are receiving NIAC for the first time.
The concept, conceived by Quinn Morley of Planet Enterprises in Gig Harbor, Washington, could explore the chemical composition of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Flying on Titan will be relatively easy due to its low gravity and dense atmosphere. Morley conceived a flying boat with powerful instruments that would seamlessly transition from soaring through Titan’s atmosphere to sailing across its lakes like a seaplane on Earth.
A project by UCLA’s Arthur Davoyan, meanwhile, could speed up flights to the outer edge of the solar system and even into interstellar space. His project will propel spacecraft by creating a “beam of granules” of microscopic particles moving at very high speeds using laser light.
This concept could significantly reduce the time needed to explore deep space. If Voyager 1 took 35 years to reach interstellar space (heliopause, roughly 123 AU from the Sun), then a one-ton spacecraft could reach 100 AU. in just three years.
The agency is funding these projects now in the hope that at least one of them will eventually pay off. If even partially successful, NASA could make discoveries that would be impossible with current technology.
All NIAC explorations are in the very early stages of concept development and are not considered official NASA missions.
