Gary's a career aerospace-engineer with a passion for High-Frequency Gravitational Wave research. He frequently collaborates with Dr. Robert Baker and the GravWave Team on HFGW projects, including some recent work in HFGW communications theory & experimental design.
The Space Technology Applications International Forum (STAIF) 2007 Conference was held at the Hotel Albuquerque from 12 Feb through 15 Feb 2007. I attended the sessions that were part of the 4th Symposium on New Frontiers, and co-chaired session F05 with Greg Meholic.
My unofficial meeting minutes of the symposium follow and in some cases I have abbreviated the paper authorship and/or titles. The focus of these minutes is on the possible practical applications. For the official program, including the exact authors and titles of each paper please refer to the STAIF web site. (Click here for the complete PDF conference minutes)
Summary & Overall Impressions:
Nuclear Power / Fusion - This year there is renewed interest in nuclear energy, both for terrestrial programs and for space - it seems the only viable alternative to hydrocarbons, and may open the door to inexpensive access to space. There is also the recognition that toroidal S1 confinement geometries (such as ITER) may never be as stable as spherical S0 geometries, especially with hybrid Inertial Electrostatic Confinement. Many new fusion ideas were presented using S0 geometries. To sum up, there is a sense that aerospace community is moving towards nuclear power as a source of power and a source of propulsion, a departure from the leadership of the "candlestick makers" (rocket scientists).
Hypersonic Flight & SSTO Operations - One of the obvious application areas for nuclear and especially fusion power would be to power hypersonic vehicles and in particular SSTO vehicles. Both last year and this year there has been a trend toward more detailed expositions of these designs, including detailed CFD analyses of the control of both the external flow fields and the internal details of the MHD bypass engine stages. See the minutes for more details on this topic.
HFGW - High Frequency Gravitational Waves continued to generate interest as experimental attempts to measure them grow closer. There are enough papers to possibly justify another dedicated international session on HFGW later this year
Gary's a career aerospace-engineer with a passion for High-Frequency Gravitational Wave research. He frequently collaborates with Dr. Robert Baker and the GravWave Team on HFGW projects, including some recent work in HFGW communications theory & experimental design.