A Virginia company named HyperV Technologies is taking a bold approach and using crow-funding, via Kickstarter, to fund their plasma based propulsion engine.

Number 2 is a great idea even as a prediction. Number 6 sounds like Skynet.

Great piece by Paul Gilster about Dyson spheres and a new way of possibly detecting them.

Instead of planets, though, Marcy has more unusual targets, the vast structures Freeman Dyson hypothesized over fifty years ago that could ring or completely enclose their parent star. Such structures, the work of a Kardashev Type II civilization — one capable of drawing on the entire energy output of its star — would power the most power-hungry society and offer up reserves of energy that would support its continuing expansion into the cosmos, if it so chose. Marcy’s plan is to look at a thousand Kepler systems for telltale evidence of such structures by examining changes in light levels around the parent star.

In a related news story, DeBeers is readying it’s new interstellar missiles.

This punk little robot is all about finding H₂O at the lunar polar regions. Throw a couple of these up there to collect water for a full scale manned mission, or a permanent manned base. Sign me up.

Gizmodo has some pictures of an unidentified nugget that appears to be metallic in nature. A martian artifact? Hmmm.
Update: Just a piece of plastic from Curiosity. Sigh.

Thanks to the US government, we get some pretty detailed (looking) schematics so we can build our own flying saucer. A little short on the engineering details, though. Circa 1956.

Richard Branson is an engaging personality and an excellent poster-child for the space dream that lives inside all of us. Check out this interview where he discusses space tourism, bringing people to Mars and the sad state of air travel right here on Earth.

An ambitious NASA proposal, to say the least.

This 46 page paper describe a ship that is 125 meters in length with the habitat modules up in front and a z-pinch nuclear rocket (capable of an ISP of 19,400) in the rear with enormous radiators in between. Z-pinch fusion uses an electro-magnetic confinement to compress a plasma that results in molecular fusion that can be used, in this case, to propel a ship at great speeds.

“An outrageously ambitious idea to accelerate the advancement of space exploration by means of a scientifically accurate yet inspiringly entertaining film which will be written and produced by a lethal combination of scientists, filmmakers and You.” Interesting.

I don’t know if this is a joke or not, but last night on Conan, JJ Abrams showed off all of a .125 second clip of the next Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.

Forbes makes the case that we are at the beginning of the forth era of space travel, an era dominated by private enterprise, and era where the common man (the common millionaire, that is) can reach the heavens.