The Echolance is designed to travel at relativistic speeds, which means that the faster it goes, the more time slows down for those on board.

Reaction Wheel Assemblies are the most crucial but have the lowest reliability of any hardware on a space telescope due to their continuous operation. Early versions were said to have 8 engines and later 24 nuclear rocket engines, which would be powered by the fusing of deuterium into helium-3. Eniac, deuterium was the fuel of choice because it could be fused without requiring a fission primary to make enough neutrons to get the “dry” fusion reaction started. In any case, one could even make a contest for this repair mission if, indeed, Kepler is dead-in-the-water, not re-purposed or fixed. His notes and sketches will provide the educational community many discussion opportunities of the engineering, discipline, and engineering ethics, as well as a chance for those who are interested to re-create some of the thoughts in the publication – perhaps using our most current technology.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Kepler news also sharpens our focus on TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which will build our catalog of nearby stars hosting exoplanets, with launch now scheduled for 2017. Among other criteria for selection: Comments must be on topic, directly related to the post in question, must use appropriate language, and must not be abusive to others. The spacecraft would be assembled in Earth orbit as part of a larger project preceded by interstellar probes and telescopic observation of target star systems. Andy, if you consider the bremsstrahlung losses, D-D come out as the most difficult of only three realistic fusion reactions (see https://en.

Modules and sub-modules could be disassembled during cruise if necessary and attached to another ship, with all parts designed to be interchangeable. Many, many factors have been taken into account, including things like genetic heath of the crew and passengers for generations, (though it is not a generation ship). To Stine, the 1970s in relation to starflight looked like a time that paralleled the 1930s, when the first experiments in rocketry were producing results and we were learning how to reach into the stratosphere. If you'd like to submit a comment for possible publication on Centauri Dreams, I will be glad to consider it.But IIRC, the 2,xxx planet “candidates” cannot be confirmed by Kepler…it can’t distinguish those from an in-line eclipsing binary.