InterstellarTechCorp.com
Title
InterStellar Technologies Corporation
Description
In May, 1998 while Dr. Fabrizio Pinto, was employed as a Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, he was asked to become involved in the initial phase of a project referred to as the InterStellar Probe Mission (ISP). At the time, Dr. Pinto was a member of JPL's Navigation and Flight Mechanics Section, and was exclusively engaged in delivering required research and development products in the areas of orbit determination and navigation, both before and after launch.
As the name of this new project correctly suggested, however, the approach required would definitely require the team to do a lot of "out of the box" thinking. The challenge posed by NASA administrators could be summarized by the following simple question: "What would it take to send a space probe to a planet in an extrasolar system?" The historical motivation for this quest, besides the general appeal of "travelling where no-one has gone before," was provided by a number of almost simultaneous discoveries: possible signs of fossil life in Martian rocks recovered in Antarctica, an ever growing number of extrasolar planets around nearby stars, and, last but by no means least, clear support from the American public for the search for any kind of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or not.
Although Dr. Pinto became involved in the project strictly in his capacity of navigator, the experience gave him exposure to the full range of startling technological challenges associated with interstellar travel as they were exposed by the other members of the team. Certainly the central problem of travelling even to a "nearby" star (meaning, for instance, one within a 40 light year distance from the sun) is that of propulsion (in this section only rough orders of magnitude are considered). At the typical speeds of modern spaceprobes (less than 100 kilometers per second) the travel time to cover, say, 100,000 billion kilometers (or approximately 10 light years) is of the order of 100,000 years -- clearly too long for any research scientist to hope to be still alive to publish any results about the mission!
Contact
Administrative:
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- Charlottesville Virginia
- United States 22903
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- 434-296-9963
Registrant:
- Intersteller Technologies Corporation
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- Monrovia California
- United States 91016
