Placeholder Image

字幕表 動画を再生する

  • A submarine that can dive through Titan’s methane seas.

  • A celestial hopper that can harvest frozen nitrogen as propellant.

  • These are the types of futuristic spacecraft that could explore distant worlds for us.

  • But while they look straight from science fiction, there’s actually an in-house conceptual

  • design team at NASA behind them.

  • I'm Steve Oleson.

  • I run the NASA COMPASS team.

  • COMPASS was begun in 2006 during the Constellation program.

  • We put the team together to basically design lunar landers.

  • How do you get people down to the surface?

  • How do you do it efficiently?

  • While the Constellation program was cancelled by the Obama Administration, word got out

  • about COMPASS’s expertise.

  • This team can deliver a new spacecraft design and scope the costs in just two weeks.

  • And it all starts with a wild idea.

  • A new technologist will bring their new power system to us and say, "Here's a reactor.

  • I want to put it on the moon.

  • How would I package it?

  • How would I land it?

  • How would I operate it?"

  • To us, every new environment, every new place to go requires a new vehicle.

  • These vehicles, a lot of times, they are spacecraft, but there's other times, they're rovers and

  • submarines.

  • It's always something new, but we do about 16 designs a year.

  • Our mantra is, "Base it on physics."

  • There could be technologies that needed to be developed.

  • We try to infuse those into our designs, but it's still something that is based on physics.

  • There are so many different spheres of expertise that go into designing a new spacecraftlike

  • propulsion, materials, softwareand theyre all woven in simultaneously during the development

  • process.

  • Imagine something flying through space has to have obviously a structure to it.

  • It's going to need power.

  • You may be able to talk to it, right?

  • You have the science instruments that gather data, so you got to send back the data with

  • a communication system.

  • We have to have some kind of radiator, so the thermal systems keep us at the right temperature,

  • so that things don't get too hot, things don't get too cold.

  • Of course, propulsion to get us to stop or start or go wherever we want to go.

  • Finally, trajectoriesso how do we get to there and get back again?

  • Ultimately though, we want to lay this whole thing out, so we have a computer configuration.

  • They look really great, and they could be feasible, but will it cost too much?

  • Is this something that's affordable for this approach?

  • We have people on the team to do all those things.

  • To get all of these team members to work together, they really need to think outside the box.

  • We do need them to know what the box is that they're trying to get out of, but communication

  • is really the key.

  • I'm like the game show host.

  • One of my biggest roles is getting new creativity out of people.

  • We often combine electric propulsion with chemical propulsion, which one would think,

  • those are at odds with each other.

  • But it turns out, chemical propulsion is really great when you're near a planetary body.

  • Electric propulsion is fantastic in deep space.

  • The technologies were already there, but how do you combine those together in a new way?

  • That's the creativity.

  • With all of these emerging discoveries, NASA’s problem isn’t trying to find places to go,

  • it’s figuring out which place to go first.

  • Titan is a wonderful place.

  • It has a very thick atmosphere.

  • Except for the temperature, if I put you on Titan in a spacesuit, you could put on some

  • wings, and you could flap around and fly, because the gravity is so low, and the atmosphere

  • is so dense…. you can splash down in the sea and become a submarine.

  • So where do you even start when you have to conceptualize a submarine to float 1.27 billion

  • kilometers away on one of Saturn’s Moon.

  • The biggest challenge with the submarine was communications and basic going up and down.

  • A boat just has to float, so we did ballast systems.

  • The other big question was communications.

  • It turns out that the liquid methane is actually radio transparent.

  • Technically, if you have an orbiter above you, you can sit on the bottom, a kilometer

  • deep, and talk through all that liquid methane.

  • It's those fascinating things to us.

  • It looks like a regular submarine, but we've got a lot of different things, because the

  • environment, the physics are so different on that moon.

  • Compass’s spacecraft designs are based off of the limited data we have so far of these

  • worlds, and hopefully theyll advance our understanding even further.

  • There's Europa with the 20 kilometers of ice and what could be below in the ocean.

  • We've designed a tunnel bot that would actually dig through there using a reactor to melt

  • its way through.

  • For the Venus land-sailing rover, we basically came up with a design that has a wing that

  • you would just turn, and you would sail in the direction you want.

  • Again, the high temperature electronics are key to making that thing work.

  • Venus is a scorching 465 degrees Celsius, enough to melt most commercial electronics.

  • To get this land sail to cruise, a team of scientists are working on new integrated circuits

  • that can withstand those high temps.

  • It's still in the conceptual design phases….You need to demonstrate the high temperature in

  • electronics first, and that's what we're doing with some demonstrations, working that now.

  • Once you get those, now you can start to explore.

  • Because Compass has to dream up the impossible, it pushes other teams to invent new technologies

  • that would power future missions.

  • And that has major benefits for us here on Earth.

  • A lot of things we've done have not flown yet, because it takes time.

  • One of the greatest things that we did was this thing called Fetch, which basically was

  • going to grab an asteroid, and we're talking something in, roughly, 10 meters diameter,

  • actually grab that with this bag and use electric propulsion to push it back.

  • This is one of the neatest things I think we've done, because this is completely out-of-the-box.

  • Can you actually grab an asteroid and move it back?

  • This project was part of Obama's Asteroid Retrieval Mission, which pledged to send astronauts

  • to an asteroid by 2025.

  • That mission was cancelled by Trump in 2017.

  • We have a joke here at NASA, that every solar cycle or 11 years or so, we switch from going

  • to Mars to the moon, and that's really what's happened.

  • Bush said, "We're going back to the moon."

  • Then, of course, Obama came in and said, "We're going to grab the asteroid, go to that."

  • Now, Trump is here.

  • Instead of grabbing the asteroid now, we're going to basically send a crew to orbit the

  • moon.

  • The same vehicle that we came up with in 2012 is now the power propulsion element for the

  • Gateway.

  • A lot of things evolved, and a one-week study evolved into now the power system and propulsion

  • system for what the astronauts are going to ride on.

  • At the heart of all of these designs, the COMPASS team enjoys the challenge.

  • Theyre taking futuristic, sci-fi designs and making them real.

  • Science fiction has led the way in a lot of space exploration just with being able to

  • think out-of-the-box.

  • In fact, we have discussions on whether they're a Star Wars fan or a Star Trek fan, right?

  • We all love those genres.

  • We grew up on them.Seeing science fiction in the movies, reading the books, gives you

  • that mindset that anything is possible, and that there are new worlds out there.

  • The COMPASS team is developing new concepts, so the public can get a better window on all

  • these things, see these new, fascinating things and maybe get a little better understanding

  • of maybe how unique we are or how unique we aren't.

  • For more science documentaries, check out this one right here.

  • Don't forget to subscribe and keep coming back to Seeker for more videos.

A submarine that can dive through Titan’s methane seas.

字幕と単語

ワンタップで英和辞典検索 単語をクリックすると、意味が表示されます

B2 中上級

ミッションデザイナーはいかにして未来的な宇宙船を発明するのか (How Mission Designers Invent Futuristic Spacecraft)

  • 2 0
    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
動画の中の単語