QUIT SMOKING A NEW PLANT EXTRACT BETTER THEN PATCHES

If quitting smoking is one of your New Year's resolutions, we might have just the thing. Cytisine, a plant extract commonly used in eastern Europe to wean people off cigarettes, appears to be much better at the task than nicotine replacement patches and gums.The scientists noticed the quantity of individuals who figured out how to refuse smoking at one week, one month, two months and six months into the trial. All through, they found that individuals taking cytisine were more averse to have smoked than those utilizing NRT. Six months in, 143 of the 655 cytisine beneficiaries were still not smoking contrasted and 100 in the NRT bunch. Significantly, Walker says, cytisine is more moderate than other stopping helps. For instance, it costs simply $20 to $30 for a 25-day course of treatment, versus $100 to $700 for a two-month course of NRT relying upon the item and who supplies it, or around $500 for a three-month course of varenicline (Champix), a medication that works in a comparable manner to cytisine. "Smokers and governments in most low and center pay nations can't manage the cost of NRT, so cytisine will without a doubt have a significant engage them," she says.

Robert West of College School London, who studies tobacco stopping examples, is additionally energetic about cytisine's potential. In 2011, he drove the first current investigation of the medication and observed that it helped smokers more than treble their shots of stopping contrasted with a placebo pill. "I think this is the greatest news in smoking discontinuance treatment ever," he says. "Here is a pill that can be created for beside nothing, that can be purchased by even the poorest smoker in India, and that can spare truly a huge number of lives."

Cytisine is sold as Tabex by Sopharma, an organization situated in Bulgaria, and as Desmoxan by Aflofarm Pharma of Poland. Sopharma has recompensed worldwide rights to market Tabex to a UK-based organization called Extab, which claims to be looking for administrative endorsement for Tabex in the US, the European Union and Japan.

SLIMMING DOWN FUTURE SPACESUITS tomorrow ASTRONAUTS

Captain log 2014.10  the new  spacesuits of the future might be totally alien-looking. MR SPOCK IS THAT WHERE get our suits came from yes captain, how long scotty i don't sir i am  MAY IN STAR DATE 2030.4  a tech not suits designer.

Instead of the bulky-looking spacesuits that astronauts wear today, a group of MIT researchers want to "shrink-wrap OR slim down the spaceflyers of tomorrow. Current spacesuits could be replaced by a pressurized but skintight suit that would allow for a much better range of motion during exploration, according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"With conventional spacesuits, you're essentially in a balloon of gas that's providing you with the necessary one-third of an atmosphere [of pressure] to keep you alive in the vacuum of space," MIT professor Dava Newman said in a statement,We want to achieve that same pressurization, but through mechanical counterpressure — applying the pressure directly to the skin, thus avoiding the gas pressure altogether," she added. "We combine passive elastics with active materials. … Ultimately, the big advantage is mobility, and a very lightweight suit for planetary exploration."

Newman and her colleagues have designed garments, which can use coils that respond to heat, contracting to a "remembered" state when exposed to the right temperatures. According to the MIT research (which was funded in part by NASA), the coils, when incorporated into a "tourniquet-like cuff," produced the same amount of pressure needed for astronauts to safely work in space.

A key technology in MIT's skintight Biosuit spacesuit is the original active tourniquet design seen here. 

Pin It A key technology in MIT's skintight Biosuit spacesuit is the original active tourniquet design seen here. The technology combines shape memory alloys with 3D-printed structures (cream-colored plastic) and a white passive fabric to provide compression for astronauts.

Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MITView full size image.                                                           Now the question is how to incorporate the coils into a spacesuit's design. The suit needs to be  skintight in order to produce enough pressure, but how does an astronaut get in and out of an extremely tight garment?

Scientists can "train" the coils to move into a certain shape when exposed to a specific temperature. When they are not exposed to the temperature, however, the coils can move into a more relaxed state, potentially allowing astronauts to remove the skintight suit.

"These are basically self-closing buckles," MIT's Bradley Holschuh, the designer of the coils, said in the same statement. "Once you put the suit on, you can run a current through all these little features, and the suit will shrink-wrap you, and pull closed."

Scientists also need to find out how to keep the coils at the proper heat so that they stay contracted. There are two options that would help maintain that position for the coils, according to Holschuh. On one hand, engineers would need to run a constant current through the suit to keep the coils contracted. This option, however, presents problems, MIT representatives said.

Constantly heating the suit would use too much energy and also overheat the astronauts inside of it, Holschuh said. Instead, the researchers want to find a way to lock the coils in place once they create the right pressure and release them once the astronaut's work is done.

This applied work could also have implications for other technologies on the ground.

"You could use this as a tourniquet system if someone is bleeding out on the battlefield," Holschuh said. "If your suit happens to have sensors, it could tourniquet you in the event of injury without you even having to think about it."

ARTIFICIAL WORLD? COULD WE BULID ONE

Chosen Sci-fi Depictions: The two Passing Stars from the Star Wars movies and related media; Shellworlds in Iain M. Banks 2008 novelMatter; uniquely designed extravagance planets in Douglas Adams' The Wanderer's Manual for the Galaxyseries.

In the event that people are going to live in an off-world territory, then it must have the things we've advanced to rely on upon here on Earth: the right temperature range, breathable air, particular gravity, day-night cycles, and bounty more. But instead than gussying up a turning, tin can space station, wouldn't it bode well to re-make our planet by building a manufactured world?

The expression "manufactured world" can be translated in two ways. The strict understanding is a planetary reproduction a huge lump of rock manufactured to be basically unclear from genuine planets and moons made by nature. The other path is to envision something that only resembles a world—say, a circular space station like the Passing Star in Star Wars. This second sort of item would not be inalienably planet- or moon-like, aside from fit as a fiddle. At the same time through shrewd building, maybe capacity may take after structure more promptly than you may might suspect.

With either approach, designers would have a heck of an occupation staring them in the face. "I would prefer not to be a killjoy, however in any event for things we think about today, [when it comes to building a counterfeit planet,] you run into issues," says Adam Steltzner, a designing individual at NASA's Plane Impetus Research facility in Pasadena, Calif.Let's begin with the second alternative the Demise Star. It appears to be more guaranteeing than building a genuine reproduction planet if in light of size. As per Star Wars legend, the first Passing Star in Star Wars Scene IV: Another Trust, had a measurement of 74 miles. That is huge, however not when contrasted with Earth's almost 8,000-mile measurement. Expecting the estimated thickness of a plane carrying warship, as the financial matters blog Centives has done, the mass of a Passing Star made generally from steel works out to around a quadrillion tons—just around one-millionth of the World's mass. Simple!

Be that as it may obtaining even that measure of material through today's mining innovation would be a foolish mission. Given a 2012 world steel generation rate of 1.43 billion tons yearly, Centives figured it would take more than 800,000 years to gain all the important steel. The sticker? A stunning $852 quadrillion, or around 13,000 times the whole world's joined terrible local item. More regrettable yet: dispatch costs. Soaring materials from Earth's surface into space runs on the request of a great many dollars every pound presently.

The main conceivable approach to secure materials efficiently is to get them from low-gravity situations, in the same way as the Moon and space rocks. "It would be shrewd …  to mine space, as opposed to attempt to rocket up a steel I-shaft," Steltzner says.

Next comes molding a quadrillion huge amounts of steel into a circle with a complex inward structure. It would be greatly troublesome, however not outlandish. Robots would need to (rapidly) handle most of the work in the event that it were to be finished in a sensible measure of time; else you're looking at utilizing multitudes of space-suited development specialists for centuries.

For reference: The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, has a mass of almost a million tons and took three years to erect, with upwards of 10,000 laborers on location. Then again, this similarity is not exactly adept (however nothing humankind has ever done truly contrasts with building a Demise Star). While the simulated world would requires a crazy measure of metal, moving those monster hunks around in space could be much less demanding (with the right machines, at any rate) than working in a searing desert assailed by gravity

Additionally consider the inside structure. The Passing Star incorporates more than 21,000 stories stacked like stories in an office building. This arrangement would never be plausible unless we created a fake gravity generators to keep individuals, furniture, and droids attached to the floor.

Earth-like gravity would be completely vital for long haul living. "Our human bodies get all fouled up when we don't have one Earth 'g'," Steltzner says. Space travelers on board the Global Space Station need to manage bone mass misfortune and low pulse, among different issues, from developed stays in microgravity.

Too bad, simulated gravity generators resist known material science. Rather, the fake lunar megastructure would need to turn to create gravity, through divergent power, ostensibly along its equator. Rather than stacked floors, living space levels in a simulated moon could take after layers in an onion. In a backwards of physical retribution, inhabitants' heads, rather than their feet, would face "down" at the megastructure's core. Gravity, as well, would be rearward. "At the middle of the structure there is no gravity, and you get all the more as the floors go out," noted Steltzner.

Getting turn itself would be straightforward. Calculated rockets could begin the entire thing turning and keep up it at the rate needed for Earth-like gravity. The rockets would not have to consistently fire, either. "Since the structure's turning out in space, there's nothing there to ease it off," Steltzner says.

Yet turning the simulated moon makes crisp issues. The areas of the structure subjected to one Earth gravity or more would need to have a sufficiently high quality to-weight degree to keep from tearing separated. Steel may not cut it for a 74-mile measurement structure, Steltzner says. A superior wager: zylon, a manufactured fiber with the best quality to-weight proportion known, which is seven times stronger than steel and about twice Kevlar's sturdiness. Zylon is natural, significance it contains carbon. So carbon-rich carbonaceous space rocks would be great digging focuses for this methodology.

For all its building difficulties, assembling our Passing Star-propelled space environment would be far less demanding than developing a reproduction Earth. However it could never match a second Earth on one thing: dependability.

"These structures or thoughts for settlements experience the ill effects of one kind of characteristic, generous blemish that is summed up in a term: precariousness," Steltzner says. "Dynamic upkeep is required for nature to be kept up, in the same way as the precise right orbital parameters. They're much, significantly less steady than our planet."

Mark Hempsell, a plane architect who worked for Response Motors Restricted and has as of late begun a private consultancy, took a turn manufactured planets in a recent report in the Diary of the English Interplanetary Society, of which he is a previous manager. He needed to analyze the achievability of terraforming a planet—that is, geo-designing it to be similar to Earth, a careful task that would presumably take hundreds of years on a world like Scratches versus building one sans preparation.

Hempsell indicates out that repeat Natural conditions, you don't need to copy Earth to a "t." for instance, mass and separation focus gravitational fascination. Along these lines, to get Natural surface gravity, specialists could cheat by pressing simply a tenth of Earth's mass—say, 700 quintillion tons—into a circle the span of the Moon (breadth: 2,159 miles). That is still a dreadful part of rock, yet Hempsell investigated how specialists may obtain that material and copy nature's planet-developing, base up procedure.

Commonly, inside a plate of extra material around a recently shaped star, particles total, a tiny bit at a time, into bigger and bigger pieces, and over a huge number of years form into a world. To speed things up, Hempsell recommended conveying a cutting edge, tremendous super-combination office close to the Sun—a megastructure to make a megastructure. Utilizing attractive fields, the office would reap rich hydrogen from the Sun's surface. Locally available combination reactors would create alluring substantial components to embody the arranged artificial Earth.

To squish a Scratches measured mass into a Moon-sized volume, designers would need the densest components on the Intermittent Table, including osmium, iridium and platinum. In fact, these components must be made in the atomic blasts of supernovae, and not through possible, enclosure mixture combination machines. "We're discussing some astounding combination innovation," Hempsell says. Anyhow at any rate the laws of known material science could in any case be complied.

The office would dispatch ingots of these materials out to where the counterfeit planet would be developed, piecemeal, as ingots impact and tie. All that ingot crushing would create noteworthy hotness all through the maturing scene, keeping pace with the 10,000-degree-Fahrenheit surface of the Sun. After a century of cooling to around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, ingots of crustal components, for example, silicon, could be layered on top. An alternate time of cooling would then need to happen, enduring around 10,000 years, until the surface would be sufficiently cool to dump water for seas and foundation.

WHAT OLDER THE SUN OR WATER IT BEEN THERE BILLION YEAR'S WATER

Much of the water on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system likely predates the birth of the sun, a new study reports.

The finding suggests that water is commonly incorporated into newly forming planets throughout the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, researchers said — good news for anyone hoping that Earth isn't the only world to host life.

"The implications of our study are that interstellar water-ice remarkably survived the incredibly violent process of stellar birth to then be incorporated into planetary bodies," study lead author Ilse Cleeves, an astronomy Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, told Space.com via email  . Theories on the Origin of Life

If our sun's formation was typical, interstellar ices, including water, likely survive and are a common ingredient during the formation of all extrasolar systems," Cleeves added. "This is particularly exciting given the number of confirmed extrasolar planetary systems to date — that they, too, had access to abundant, life-fostering water during their formation."

Astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 exoplanets so far, and many billions likely lurk undetected in the depths of space. On average, every Milky Way star is thought to host at least one planet.

Our solar system abounds with water. Oceans of it slosh about not only on Earth's surface but also beneath the icy shells of Jupiter's moon Europa and the Saturn satellite  Enceladus. And water ice is found on Earth's moon, on comets, at the Martian poles and even inside shadowed craters on Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

Cleeves and her colleagues wanted to know where all this water came from.

"Why is this important? If water in the early solar system was primarily inherited as ice from interstellar space, then it is likely that similar ices, along with the prebiotic organic matter that they contain, are abundant in most or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars," study co-author Conel Alexander, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

"But if the early solar system's water was largely the result of local chemical processing during the sun's birth, then it is possible that the abundance of water varies considerably in forming planetary systems, which would obviously have implications for the potential for the emergence of life elsewhere," Alexander added.

Heavy and 'normal' water

Not all water is "standard" H2O. Some water molecules contain deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen that contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. (Isotopes are different versions of an element whose atoms have the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons. The most common hydrogen isotope, known as protium, for example, has one proton but no neutrons.)

Because they have different masses, deuterium and protium behave differently during chemical reactions. Some environments are thus more conducive to the formation of "heavy" water — including super-cold places like interstellar space.

The researchers constructed models that simulated reactions within a protoplanetary disk, in an effort to determine if processes during the early days of the solar system could have generated the concentrations of heavy water observed today in Earth's oceans, cometary material and meteorite samples.

The team reset deuterium levels to zero at the beginning of the simulations, then watched to see if enough deuterium-enriched ice could be produced within 1 million years — a standard lifetime for planet-forming disks.

The answer was no. The results suggest that up to 30 to 50 percent of Earth's ocean water and perhaps 60 to 100 percent of the water on comets originally formed in interstellar space, before the sun was born. (These are the high-end estimates generated by the simulations; the low-end estimates suggest that at least 7 percent of ocean water and at least 14 percent of comet water predates the sun.)

"A significant fraction of Earth's water is likely incredibly old, so old that it predates the Earth itself," Cleeves said. "For me, uncovering these kinds of direct links between our daily experience and the galaxy at large is fascinating and puts a wonderful perspective on our place in the universe."

WHY HURRICANES HAVE NAMES

Hurricane names are even fodder for comedians. Sardonic comedian Lewis Black has expressed his views of 1991's Hurricane Bob and 1999's Hurricane Lenny. Satirical news source "The Onion" suggested that a nameless hurricane would be terrifying compared to a storm named 'Earl'. In 2012, Hurricane Fabio, which did not threaten land, elicited snickers from meteorologists tracking the storm in the Eastern Pacific.

A Little History

The word hurricane is derived from the Spanish word "huracan," which was most likely inspired by Hunrakan, the Mayan storm god, and Hurakan, a Taino and Carib god. The word hurricane was first used to describe any localized tropical cyclone in the West Indies.Today, a hurricane is an Atlantic or Eastern Pacific Basin tropical cyclone with maximum sustained wind speeds of 74 mph or higher.

Multiple tropical cyclones can develop simultaneously in various ocean basins, creating the possibility of confusion if a method for differentiating the storms did not exist. Naming tropical cyclones allows meteorologists to observe, track, and communicate the whereabouts of various systems at a given time.It is important to note that tropical cyclones/hurricanes are named neither after any particular person, nor with any preference in alphabetical sequence," states the WMO. "The tropical cyclone/hurricane names selected are those that are familiar to the people in each region."

Particularly deadly or costly storm names are retired in order to avoid confusion or insensitivity, and a new name is selected in its place. The names Camille, Andrew, and Katrina are among the retired.

Hurricane vs. Typhoon: What's the Difference?

The difference is rather simple: A tropical cyclone will be designated either a hurricane or a typhoon or a cyclone depending on the basin in which it forms.

Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin that reach the 74 mph sustained wind speed threshold are called hurricanes, and they are monitored by the National Hurricane Center.

LARGER IMAGE

In the Central and Eastern Pacific Basin, tropical cyclones are also called hurricanes, and they are monitored by the National Hurricane Center and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center.

In the Western Pacific Basin, tropical cyclones that exhibit sustained wind speeds of 39 mph are called tropical storms, just like in the Atlantic and in the eastern Pacific. At this point, they would receive a name from the list designated by the World Meteorological Organization.

However, when sustained wind speeds reach 74 mph, the cyclone is not called a hurricane but rather a typhoon,and they are monitored by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as well as the Japan Meteorological Agency. When wind speeds reach 150 mph or greater, the system is called a "super typhoon", which is the equivalent of a strong Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.

When typhoons threaten the Philippines, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) monitors the cyclones. As typhoons move west into China, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) monitors the storms.

In the southwestern Pacific and Indian Basins, the systems are called cyclones, and they are monitored by a handful of agencies including the India Meteorological Department, Meteo-France, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, and the Meteorological Service of New Zealand.

Historically, the convention behind naming hurricanes started off innocuously enough. For centuries, forecasters named storms after they hit, and those names would associate the storm with a particular place, time, or event. If a storm struck a particular ship or town, the hurricane was named after the collateral damage. An example of this is the Long Island Express, which is a hurricane that struck New England in 1938.

A modern example of naming hurricanes based on the day is the September 1935  Labor Day Hurricane, which earned its name because it made landfall in the central Florida Keys on Labor Day.

Why Do Tropical Storms and Hurricanes Receive Names Like Bob, Sandy, or Don?

Obviously meteorologists no longer name tropical storms and hurricanes after locations, dates, and saints. But why do they receive names like Norbert, Bob, Sandy, or Don?

It turns out that the process of naming hurricanes has a colorful history. What began as an Australian scientist's meteorological "middle finger" toward local politicians in the early 1900s morphed into a seemingly benign practice half a century later.

According to Chris Landsea at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), Clement Wragge, the Australian forecaster, began tracking tropical systems near the Australian continent in the early 1900s, and he was the first person to attribute a proper name to tropical cyclones.

Wragge originally used letters of the alphabet to identify storms before changing course to South Sea Island girls' names. However, when the Australian government refused to support his meteorological efforts, Wragge began attributing named storms “after political figures whom he disliked,” according to the AOML. 

"By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as 'causing great distress' or 'wandering aimlessly about the Pacific,'" writes Landsea.

Years later, author George Stewart took inspiration from Wragge and wrote the novel "Storm." One of the characters in the book was a meteorologist who named Pacific systems after former girlfriends. Published in 1941, the novel was a hit with the U.S. Army Air Corp and Navy forecasters. Military forecasters began unofficially naming Pacific tempests "in honor” of their girlfriends and wives off-the-record.

"The U.S. Weather Bureau had a long history of being a somewhat stodgy institution in which change was disparaged," says Neal Dorst, a research meteorologist at the AOML. "They wanted to be seen as a serious enterprise, and using women's names for storms was looked upon as frivolous. They would have felt that using such names in official communications would have made them look silly."

George R. StewartWIKIPEDIA/PEPSO

Portrait of George R. Stewart

Nevertheless, military squadrons and meteorologists needed a system for denoting and tracking storms that formed in the Atlantic and Pacific Basins. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force compromised by using the Army/Navy phonetic alphabet. According to Dorst, the Army/Navy phonetic alphabet names were used in communications between aircraft and weather centers, however the names were not included in any public communications. Despite the use of the Army/Navy phonetic alphabet, Dorst explains a possible female name storm list was used by Air Force Hurricane Hunters during missions in 1947, as documented in the September issue of the "Coronet" magazine issued in September 1948.

The protocol for naming hurricanes and tropical storms solidified in 1950. That summer, three hurricanes developed simultaneously in the Atlantic Basin, generating confusion among the public and the press, who were not aware of any naming scheme for tropical storms and hurricanes. Instead of waiting until the following summer to introduce the naming concept to the public, the United States Weather Bureau (the precursor to the National Weather Service) and the Interdepartmental Hurricane Conference pulled the trigger on the fourth storm and named it Fox.

2014 Atlantic Names

In the Atlantic Basin, forecasters used the Army/Navy phonetic alphabet for tropical storms and hurricanes between 1950 and 1952. The list changed in 1952 to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) because the Army/Navy list was deemed too Anglo-centric. The change did not go smoothly.

"The U.S. Weather Bureau and the Armed Services would have adopted the new international standard, but as this was the first year of its use, I'm sure not everyone got the memo, which led to the confusion," said Dorst.

However, the confusion over the IPA wasn't the only debatable topic.

The Fight for Naming Equality

In 1953, the Interdepartmental Hurricane Conference and the U.S. Weather Bureau acquiesced to using women's names for labeling storms. Controversy began as early as 1954, when the October 19 edition of the Miami News wrote, "[it] seems a number of Northern newspapers editorially thought it was 'Capricious' to call the hurricanes Hazel, Carol, Alice, etc."

The Miami News

A clipping from the Oct. 18, 1954 edition of The Miami News.

In 1955, the Times-News, reported on a New Jersey politician's disdain for the policy. The article reported Rep. T. James Tumulty (D-NJ) "told a reporter that by following the practice, the weather bureau 'tends to treat a serious matter frivolously and may even aid to the deaths, injuries, and destruction' caused by hurricanes by unconsciously prompting the public to regard them frivolously, too." The paper then listed Tumulty's suggested list of names: Hurricane Awesome, Hurricane Blustery, Hurricane Casualty, and Hurricane Death.

EARTH IS DR. JEKYLL AND VENUS IS MRS HYDE

Earth is Dr. Jekyll, men are from mars, and Venus is Mrs. Hyde,100 billion Venus-like planets in our galaxy. Hopefully astronomers will be able to find more difficult to detect Earth-size planets in Earth-like orbits so that they can come up with an estimate on the prevalence of habitable planets soon.you can't distinguish between the two based only on size," lead author Stephen Kane, of San Francisco State University, said in a statement. "So the question then is, how do you define those differences, and how many 'Venuses' is Kepler actually finding?" The results could also lead to a better understanding of Earth's history, Kane added. We believe the Earth and Venus had similar starts in terms of their atmospheric evolution," he said. "Something changed at one point, and the obvious difference between the two is proximity to the sun." Kane and his team defined the Venus Zone based on solar flux — the amount of stellar energy that orbiting planets receive. The outer edge of the zone is the point at which a runaway greenhouse effect would take hold, with a planet's temperature soaring thanks to heat-trapping gases in its atmosphere. The inner boundary, meanwhile, is the distance at which stellar radiation would completely strip away a planet's air. The thinking is similar to that behind the "habitable zone" — the just-right range of distances from a star at which liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, may be able to exist. The dimensions of these astronomical zones vary from star to star, since some stars are hotter than others. In our own solar system, the Venus Zone's outer boundary lies just inside the orbit of Earth, researchers said. Future space-based instruments — such as NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018 — will be able to analyze some exoplanets' atmospheres, helping scientists refine the Venus Zone concept, researchers said. "If we find all of these planets in the Venus Zone have a runaway greenhouse-gas effect, then we know that the distance a planet is from its star is a major determining factor. That's helpful to understanding the history between Venus and Earth," Kane said. "This is ultimately about putting our solar system in context," he added. "We want to know if various aspects of our solar system are rare or common." Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009 on a mission to determine how commonly Earth-like planets occur around the Milky Way galaxy. To date, Kepler has detected more than 4,200 exoplanet candidates, 978 of which have been confirmed by follow-up observations or analysis. Mission team members think about 90 percent of the candidates will eventually turn out to be the real deal. The telescope suffered a glitch in May 2013 that ended its original exoplanet hunt, but Kepler has embarked upon a new mission called K2, which calls for it to observe a range of cosmic objects and phenomena.

SCI FI SCIENCE Invisibility Cloak SPOCK I CAPTAIN THOSE EARTH OR Romulan

Sci Fi Science: Invisibility Cloak

Is it possible to make humans invisible yes captain it's logical at time to have made us at star date 2667.7 then it was star date 2012.3? bone what do think I am not a cloaking engineer captain, I am doctor Jim ,HAIL THE OTHER DOC FROM EARTH WHO MADE HIS NAME IS DOC, Michio Kaku yes it's me doc Michio unveils his design for a workable invisibility cloak.An invisibility cloak is a magical garment which renders whatever it covers unseeable. They may be made from hair of Demiguise, a magical creature that possesses the power to become invisible. This property is used to make the wearer of the cloak invisible. 

 Innovation of Romulan root, initially depicted in 2266, that can create a vitality screen to render a target object  typically a shuttle  moderately undetectable to sensors.
Due to their immense power drain, cloaking generators have usually prohibited simultaneous use of other major systems such as weaponry, shields or warp drive.
Albeit normal to Klingon dispatches too since the brief collusion with Romulus in the 2260s, League vessels have consented to forego utilization of shrouds under the Settlement of Algeron, aside from on account of the U.S.S. Disobedient, which uses such a gadget by exceptional course of act                                        

RECYCLING OLD BATTERIES into SOLAR cells

One inspiration for utilizing the lead as a part of old auto batteries is that battery innovation is experiencing quick change, with new, more effective sorts, for example, lithium-particle batteries, quickly assuming control over the business sector. "Once the battery innovation develops, more than 200 million lead-corrosive batteries will conceivably be resigned in the United States, and that could result in a ton of natural issues," Belcher says. 

Today, she says, 90 percent of the lead recouped from the reusing of old batteries is utilized to create new batteries, however after some time the business sector for new lead-corrosive batteries is liable to decay, conceivably leaving an extensive stockpile of lead with no conspicuous application. 

In a completed sun powered board, the lead-containing layer would be completely typified by different materials, as numerous sun oriented boards are today, constraining the danger of lead pollution of nature. At the point when the boards are inevitably resigned, the lead can basically be reused into new sunlight based boards. 

"The procedure to exemplify them will be the same concerning polymer cells today," Chen says. "That innovation can be effortlessly deciphered." 

"It is imperative that we consider the life cycles of the materials in vast scale vitality frameworks," Hammond says. "Furthermore here we accept the sheer straightforwardness of the methodology looks good for its business usage." 

Belcher accepts that the reused perovskite sunlight based cells will be grasped by different photovoltaics specialists, who can now tweak the innovation for most extreme effectiveness. The collaboration unmistakably shows that lead recouped from old batteries is generally as useful for the creation of perovskite sun oriented cells as newly delivered metal. 

A few organizations are now intending up for business generation of perovskite photovoltaic boards, which could some way or another oblige new wellsprings of lead. Since this could uncover diggers and smelters to harmful exhaust, the presentation of reusing rather could give quick advantages, the group says. . 

The framework is depicted in a paper in the diary Vitality and Ecological Science, co-wrote by educators Angela M. Belcher and Paula T. Hammond, graduate understudy Po-Yen Chen, and three others. It is in light of a late improvement in sun based cells that makes utilization of a compound called perovskite - particularly, organolead halide perovskite - an innovation that has quickly advanced from beginning examinations to a point where its effectiveness is almost aggressive with that of different sorts of sun powered cells. 

"It went from beginning showings to great effectiveness in under two years," says Belcher, the W.M. Keck Teacher of Vitality at MIT. As of now, perovskite-based photovoltaic cells have accomplished force transformation productivity of more than 19 percent, which is near to that of numerous business silicon-based sun powered cells. 

Starting depictions of the perovskite innovation distinguished its utilization of lead, whose generation from crude minerals can deliver lethal deposits, as a disadvantage. Be that as it may by utilizing reused lead from old auto batteries, the assembling methodology can rather be utilized to occupy lethal material from landfills and reuse it in photovoltaic boards that could continue creating force for quite a long time. 

Amazingly, on the grounds that the perovskite photovoltaic material takes the manifestation of a flimsy film simply a large portion of a micrometer thick, the group's examination demonstrates that the lead from a solitary auto battery could deliver enough sunlight based boards to give force to 30 families. 

As an included playing point, the creation of perovskite sun oriented cells is a generally straightforward and amiable methodology. "It has the preference of being a low-temperature procedure, and the quantity of steps is lessened" contrasted and the production of ordinary sunlight based cells, Belcher says. 

Those components will help to make it "simple to get to huge scale inexpensively," Chen includes.

WHAT IF COMPUTERS HAD GLASSES, WE USE OUR SMARTPHONE ,TABLETS AS LENSES

What if computer screens had glasses instead of the people staring at the monitors? That concept is not too far afield from technology being developed by UC Berkeley computer and vision scientists.

The researchers are developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual's visual impairment, and creating vision-correcting displays that enable users to see text and images clearly without wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses. The technology could potentially help hundreds of millions of people who currently need corrective lenses to use their smartphones, tablets and computers. One common problem, for example, is presbyopia, a type of farsightedness in which the ability to focus on nearby objects is gradually diminished as the aging eyes' lenses lose elasticity.
More importantly, the displays could one day aid people with more complex visual problems, known as high order aberrations, which cannot be corrected by eyeglasses, said Brian Barsky, UC Berkeley professor of computer science and vision science, and affiliate professor of optometry.
"We now live in a world where displays are ubiquitous, and being able to interact with displays is taken for granted," said Barsky, who is leading this project. "People with higher order aberrations often have irregularities in the shape of the cornea, and this irregular shape makes it very difficult to have a contact lens that will fit. In some cases, this can be a barrier to holding certain jobs because many workers need to look at a screen as part of their work. This research could transform their lives, and I am passionate about that potential."
Using computation to correct vision
The UC Berkeley researchers teamed up with Gordon Wetzstein and Ramesh Raskar, colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to develop their latest prototype of a vision-correcting display. The setup adds a printed pinhole screen sandwiched between two layers of clear plastic to an iPod display to enhance image sharpness. The tiny pinholes are 75 micrometers each and spaced 390 micrometers apart.
The research team will present this computational light field display on Aug. 12 at the International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, or SIGGRAPH, in Vancouver, Canada.
"The significance of this project is that, instead of relying on optics to correct your vision, we use computation," said lead author Fu-Chung Huang, who worked on this project as part of his computer science Ph.D. dissertation at UC Berkeley. "This is a very different class of correction, and it is non-intrusive."
The algorithm, which was developed at UC Berkeley, works by adjusting the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a single pixel in an image based upon a user's specific visual impairment. In a process called deconvolution, the light passes through the pinhole array in such a way that the user will perceive a sharp image.
"Our technique distorts the image such that, when the intended user looks at the screen, the image will appear sharp to that particular viewer," said Barsky. "But if someone else were to look at the image, it would look bad."
In the experiment, the researchers displayed images that appeared blurred to a camera, which was set to simulate a person who is farsighted. When using the new prototype display, the blurred images appeared sharp through the camera lens.
This latest approach improves upon earlier versions of vision-correcting displays that resulted in low-contrast images. The new display combines light field display optics with novel algorithms.
Huang, now a software engineer at Microsoft Corp. in Seattle, noted that the research prototype could easily be developed into a thin screen protector, and that continued improvements in eye-tracking technology would make it easier for the displays to adapt to the position of the user's head position.

A REAL INVISIBILITY CLOAK SPOCK I CAPTAIN IT LOGICAL IT'S 2014

A real invisibility cloak may still be the stuff of fantasy, but scientists have figured out a way to hide objects from touch. While Klingon vessels in the television series set after The Original Series possess cloaking devices, the Klingon D7-class does not at first. This is changed after "The Enterprise Incident", several D7-class battlecruisers are shown under Romulan control as the result of a technology exchange between the Romulans and the Klingons; these vessels do utilize a cloaking device. .Two years ago, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany successfully created pentamodes, or mechanical metamaterials. Now, researchers have found a fascinating property in the metamaterial: the ability to hide or "cloak" the existence of foreign objects hidden within it. It's a discovery that could lead to making everything from more comfortable camping gear to shoes that make you feel like you're walking on air.  millimeter scale, this polymer-based, scaffold-like structure can shape itself around a object — say, a tiny hard tube — and disperse pressure in such a way that human touch can't detect its existence. Put another way, if all the mattresses from the Hans Christen Anderson classic fable "The Princess and the Pea" were made out of this mechanical metamaterial, the princess would never have felt the pea, even if she were sleeping on just one thin sheet of the nanomaterial. This is how the metamaterial works Courtesy Karlsruhe Institute of Technology This trick wouldn't work in an everyday material.                                                                                                                                                                                                        The KIT researchers describe its mechanical metamaterial as such: It is a crystalline material structured with sub-micrometer accuracy. It consists of needle-shaped cones, whose tips meet. The size of the contact points is calculated precisely to reach the mechanical properties desired. In this way, a structure results, through which a finger or a measurement instrument cannot feel its way."                                                                                                                                                                                              This mechanical metamaterial is quite pleasing to the eye, and thanks to its nano design, is also incredibly light. Its unique structure is produced by using Nanoscribe's 3D laser lithography. While this is purely a research project, the results of which are published in the "Nature Communications" journal, the KIT researchers do envision an interesting nanomaterial future. The discovery could, for example, eventually be used to make more comfortable sleeping bags that shield the user from feeling rocks or pebbles on the ground or rugs that hide the bumps of bad flooring and cables. There's no word yet if this nanomaterial could someday be used for more nefarious purposes, like hiding a weapon or contraband from a pat-down.                                                                         

CITIES AND STATES BUILD THEIR OWN MICROGRIDS FUEL CELLS ELIMINATE POWER OUTAGES

General Electric has a bright idea for keeping the lights on even when the electrical grid short-circuits. The 122-year-old company wants to bring clean, reliable, affordable energy to the masses with hyper-efficient fuel cells , and in a rare move, is launching a startup to do it.
On Tuesday, the energy and electronics conglomerate unveiled GE Fuel Cells, an internal startup that’s working to commercialize fuel cell technology that runs on natural gas, creating energy that’s not only cleaner than dirty power plants, but more energy efficient, too. In the race to create a more environmentally sound alternative to power plants, fuel cells have emerged as a viable option, alongside solar and wind power. But unlike solar and wind power, fuel cells can provide steady, nonstop energy that doesn’t fade when the sun goes down or when the wind stops blowing.

Since Hurricane Sandy, there’s been a widespread movement to “unplug” from the grid’s vulnerable infrastructure.

Instead, they’re similar to batteries and use a chemical reaction, rather than combustion, to generate energy. The problem is, fuel cell technology has been prohibitively expensive, because it often requires costly materials like platinum, to trigger the chemical reaction. But GE is working on making advances in technology known as “hybrid solid oxide fuel cells,” which use less expensive materials like ceramic and stainless steel to deliver 65 percent energy efficiency—5 percent higher than anything else on the market today. And while GE might not be alone in this field—Bloom Energy, a NASA spinoff, has had some success with a similar concept—experts say that GE’s entry into the space could turn what has been a fringe industry into a mainstream success.
“Having the GE logo on the side of the unit will, I think, lend quite a bit of credibility, as a known name in the field,” says Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine.

GE’s timing couldn’t be better. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest hurricane in United States history, “resilience” has become a buzzy idea. The storm, which caused 8.1 million people across 17 states to lose power, called attention to the country’s aging power grid. Since then, there’s been a widespread movement to “unplug” from the grid’s vulnerable infrastructure. According to  the number of standalone electricity-generation units at commercial and industrial sites has more than quadrupled since 2006.
Meanwhile, cities and states are attempting to build their own “microgrids,” or self-sustaining energy systems that operate independently of the broader grid. In the ensuing years, the call from businesses, municipalities, and even the Obama administration for more reliable forms of energy has grown deafening, and GE, which has been working on fuel cell technology in its global research center for decades, finally decided to answer it.
According to Johanna Wellington, who runs GE Fuel Cells as general manager, the company stumbled upon two major breakthroughs in recent years that convinced the higher ups at GE to invest more heavily in fuel cells. Traditionally, solid oxide fuel cells require a very thin layer of ceramic that can withstand the extreme heat—1,500°F—needed to turn natural gas into energy. But the ceramic is delicate, and when hundreds of these cells are stacked on top of one another, they’re susceptible to breakage. As a result, existing solid oxide fuel cells are small, making the materials more manageable, but the technology less scalable.
GE took a different approach. Using technology similar to what it uses to coat its jet engines, GE figured out how to spray the ceramic, almost like spray paint, in layers. “There are huge advantages to this in terms of the ability to scale,” Wellington says. It means the cells can cover a larger surface area, the ceramic will always lay flat, and it can act as its own sealant, reducing many of the common risks involved in manufacturing this technology.

Because these fuel cells would be stored locally, rather than at a central plant, they’re less vulnerable to outages when severe weather strikes.

Having crossed that hurdle, GE began considering how to make its fuel cells more energy efficient than the competition. To do that, a team of researchers decided to marry the fuel cell technology with a traditional gas engine. Whatever exhaust the fuel cell gives off, which is mostly steam and carbon dioxide, is processed by a gas engine, giving an added oomph to the energy output.
According to Samuelsen, that last part is key, because it will enable the fuel cell to increase and decrease its output as needed, something that most existing fuel cells can’t do. Plus, he says, the fact that the gas engine helps make the system more efficient than any alternative “will be very popular in the marketplace.”

The fuel cells are still in the prototyping phase, and GE is currently developing a pilot manufacturing facility, where it can test the technology at commercial scale. Though Wellington says GE won’t begin selling the technology for another couple of years, she already has plenty of potential applications in mind.
Tech companies, for one, are beginning to do something about their massive energy hogging data centers. Bloom Energy, GE’s main competitor, has already sold its fuel cells to the likes of eBay and Google to make their data centers cleaner. Wellington says GE, too, could easily enter this space.
Cities working on resilience efforts will also be a key market for GE’s fuel cells. Because these fuel cells would be stored locally, rather than at a central plant, they’re less vulnerable to outages when severe weather strikes. Plus, they’re more efficient and environmentally sound than traditional diesel backup generators. Meanwhile, Wellington also sees opportunities in parts of the developing world, where there is no grid infrastructure yet and demand for it is still limited. Rather than building their own power lines and transmission networks, she says, “This gives developing countries an option to build out efficient power in increments, as they need it.”
Still, Wellington says she can’t imagine this technology completely replacing the grid in the U.S. any time soon. “When you’re looking for very large chunks of power, there’s always going to be some need for centralized power,” she says.
Instead, fuel cells will, like solar and wind power, be added to the menu of options for cutting down on our energy use and exclusive reliance on the grid. “Historically, you had gas, steam and coal,” she says. “This breaks that paradigm. Now, you can have efficient energy that’s just as good. To me, that’s very exciting.”

EXOPLANETS THAT WE HOST ALIEN LIFE

 The planet candidate Tau Ceti e, which was detected in December 2012, is found just 11.9 light-years from Earth. This world is a "super-Earth" at least 4.3 times as massive as Earth. Depending on its atmosphere, Tau Ceti e could be a mildly hot planet suitable for simple life, or a scorching world like Venus.                                                                                                                                           

Credit: Lynette CookThis planet is a controversial find. It was discovered in 2010, but there has been difficulty in getting it confirmed. Still, the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo calls Gliese 581 the top candidate for alien life. If confirmed, this rocky world is about 20 light-years away from Earth's sun, and is two to three times as massive as Earth. It orbits its parent star, Gliese 581, about every 30 days in the constellation Libra.

Another "super-Earth", Gliese 667Cc is also close by Earth: about 22 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The planet is at least 4.5 times bigger than Earth, and takes 28 days to make an orbit around its parent star. GJ 667C – the parent star – is actually part of a triple-star system. The star is an M-class dwarf star that is about a third of the mass of Earth's sun. "Super-Earth" HD 40307g orbits comfortably inside the habitable zone of its parent star. It lies about 42 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pictor. It is so close by that future telescopes may be able to peer at its surface. It orbits its parent star about 56 million miles (90 million kilometers) away, which is just over half of the Earth-sun distance of 93 million miles (150 million kilometers.)      
The mass of Gliese 163c puts the planet in a gray zone. The planet is seven times the mass of Earth, which could make it a very large rocky planet or a dwarf gas giant. Gliese 163c whirls around its dim planet star every 26 days, at a distance of 50 light-years away from Earth. Its parent star is in the constellation Dorado.                                                                                                                                                           At least one study supposes that Gliese 581d might have a thick, carbon dioxide atmosphere. It is about seven times more massive than Earth, orbits a red dwarf star, and is a sister planet to the also-potentially-habitable Gliese 581g. At just 20 light-years away from the sun, Gliese 581d is essentially in Earth's backyard.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Tau Ceti f is a super-Earth candidate like its sibling Tau Ceti e, but it orbits close to the outer edge of Tau Ceti's habitable zone. Tau Ceti f is at least 6.6 times as massive as Earth and could be suitable for life, if its atmosphere traps significant amounts of heat                               

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ROCK ROLL LEGEND

Rock and Roll legend Bruce Springsteen released a limited edition, four-song vinyl EP to commemorate Record Store Day on April 19th.  The EP, entitled American Beauty, is made up of leftover tracks that did not make the final cut on the Boss’ previous two releases.  With Springsteen back in the public eye in support of old-school vinyl records and the hardworking store owners who sell them, now would be a good time to take a look back at Bruce’s long and storied career.

Springsteen is the working man’s rock star.  His music, from 1984’s “Born in the USA” to this week’s release of “Hurry Up Sundown”, strikes a chord with the blue jeans-wearing, pickup trick-driving, blue collar crowd that is more commonly associated with Country music.  Springsteen’s enduring popularity shows that there is a significant rock contingent among the working class of America.

The 64-year-old Springsteen has 20 Grammy Awards to his credit, as well as a couple of Golden Globes and even an Oscar.  He was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the lesser-known Songwriters Hall of Fame.  The New Jersey native oozes the New Jersey working class pathos and his works resonate with generation after generation.

It is an odd footnote to Springsteen’s long career that his biggest hit was one of the most misunderstood songs ever recorded.  “Born in the USA” was often thought to be a patriotic hymn or an ode to the greatness of the United States of America despite that fact that even a cursory examination of the lyrics tells a very different story.  The lyrics to “Born in the USA” tell a sad tale of a military veteran who is rewarded for his service with apathy upon his return.  The rocking melody and cheerful refrain somehow overwhelmed the true nature of the song in the public perception.  Springsteen would address that perception with a remarkable acoustic version of the song that resonates musically in line with the somber tone of the lyrics.

In recent years, Springsteen’s E-Street Band lost two members.  Journeyman Danny Federici passed away from cancer in 2008.  Saxophonist Clarence Clemons died of complications after a stroke in 2011.  Despite these tragic losses, Springsteen has continued to release albums and travel the world performing live.  Springsteen’s eighteenth album, High Hopes, was released in January 2014.  A mishmash of old, new, and repurposed music, High Hopes still sparkles with the old magic that made Springsteen a household name.

The mere three-month span separating High Hopes from American Beauty makes 2014 the Year of the Boss, with a total of 16 “new” songs available for consumption.  Whether the songs are newly-minted or updated classics or simply newly-released, the body of work coming out this year resonates with the three generations of Springsteen fans and may well serve to introduce the next group of fans to one of America’s greatest Rock and Roll legends.

NASA HAS BUILT FLYING SAUCERS FOR MARS MISSIONS, POSSIBLE KNOW TO US AS U. F.O

New NASA gear that could help humanity set up an outpost on Mars has gotten its first test flight.

The space agency launched its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test vehicle today (June 28) from Hawaii. Although the first part of the test went well, the vehicle's huge parachute failed to deploy properly — but LDSD engineers likely won't view that as a disaster. 

"We're doing something that hasn't been done before," LDSD principal investigator Ian Clark, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Space.com in April. "While I'm optimistic that things will go well, if they don't, that's probably even better, because we tend to learn more from the failures than from the successes."                                                                                                                                      Today's test — which lifted off from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai at about 2:40 p.m. EDT (1840 GMT; 8:40 a.m. local Hawaii time) — was designed to help NASA engineers get their first good look at how equipment designed to slow the descent of heavy spacecraft through the Red Planet's atmosphere performs at high speeds in Mars-like conditions. 

Today's flight was originally scheduled for June 3, but poor weather conditions pushed it back multiple times, causing a delay of nearly a month.                                                                                                                  The LDSD project is developing and testing a 100-foot-wide (30.5 meters) parachute — the biggest supersonic chute ever flown — and two saucer-like devices called Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators, or SIADs.

One SIAD is 20 feet (6 m) wide, while the other measures 26 feet (8 m) across. Both devices are built to fit around the rim of atmospheric entry vehicles like the one that carried NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in August 2012, slowing them down by increasing their drag. 

Today's test called for a huge balloon to carry the 7,000-lb. (3,175 kilograms) test vehicle, which was equipped with the big chute and the 20-foot SIAD, up to an altitude of 23 miles (37 kilometers). The balloon would drop the craft, whose onboard rocket motor would kick on and boost it to Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound) and 34 miles up (55 km).

The thin air at such heights is a good analog for the Martian atmosphere, which is just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth at sea level, researchers said.

If the test had gone perfectly, the SIAD would have inflated and slowed the test vehicle down to Mach 2.5, at which point the chute would have deployed and taken the craft down to a soft splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

But things did not go perfectly. The balloon dropped the test vehicle at 5:05 p.m. EDT (2105 GMT), and the rocket appeared to fire properly. The SIAD seemed to inflate as planned, but the parachute didn't deploy correctly, officials said. More information will become available later, after engineers have had a chance to analyze data from the test.

The LDSD team aims to retrieve the downed balloon — which, when inflated, could fill a football stadium such as the Rose Bowl — and the test vehicle by boat, both to recover all the test data and to avoid littering the ocean, NASA officials said. It could take about a day to track this gear down. 

Getting big payloads down on Mars

At 1 ton, the SUV-size Curiosity rover is the biggest spacecraft ever to touch down on Mars. The robot landed softly thanks to a bold and complicated scheme that involved a 51-foot-wide (15.5 m) parachute and a rocket-powered sky crane, which lowered Curiosity down to the surface on cables.

NASA's Low-Density Supersonic DeceleratorNASA workers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wearing clean room "bunny suits," prepare the LDSD test article for shipment later this month to Hawaii. LDSD will help land bigger space payloads on Mars or return them back to Earth. 

Credit: NASA/JPLView full size image

The sky crane can (and probably will) be used again to put payloads down on Mars. But new gear such as bigger chutes and SIADs will likely have to be included to slow really heavy stuff down enough for the sky crane to finish the job, Clark said. And that's where the LDSD project comes in.

"With the science and the technologies that we're testing here, we think we could double the mass that we land on Mars, which would go from something like the 1-ton Curiosity rover to something twice that," Clark told reporters during a pre-launch briefing in early June, adding that the gear could also help put payloads down more accurately and at higher elevations on the Red Planet than is currently possible.

The LDSD technologies should also be extensible, Clark said. For example, multiple 100-foot-wide chutes could work together, helping put human-scale payloads — such as habitat modules and other big pieces of infrastructure — down on Mars.

"We think that the parachute we're developing and testing is amenable to being used in clusters," Clark said. "Several parachutes at once create even more drag, and those kinds of things are the technologies that would enable the 20 to 30 tons that we're talking about."

The next stop for the LDSD gear will not be Mars, however. NASA plans at least two more flight tests out of Hawaii, both of which will likely happen in 2015.