Super Spaceships

Tomorrow's spacecraft will be built using advanced materials with mind-boggling properties.

"What I'm really looking for," you say to the salesman, "is a car that goes at least 10,000 miles between fill-ups, repairs itself automatically, cruises at 500 mph, and weighs only a few hundred pounds."

As he stands there wide-eyed, you add, "Oh yeah, and I can only spend about a quarter of what these other cars cost."

A request like this is sure to get you laughed off the new-car lot. But in many ways, this dream car is a metaphor for the space vehicles we'll need to expand our exploration of the solar system in the decades to come. These new spacecraft will need to be faster, lighter, cheaper, more reliable, more durable, and more versatile, all at the same time.

Impossible? Before you answer, consider how a rancher from 200 years ago might have reacted if a man had asked to buy a horse that could run 100 mph for hours on end, carry his entire family and all their luggage, and sing his favourite songs to him all the while! Today we call them minivans.

Revolutions in technology - like the Industrial Revolution that replaced horses with cars - can make what seems impossible today commonplace tomorrow.

Such a revolution is happening right now. Three of the fastest-growing sciences of our day - biotech, nanotech, and information technology - are converging to give scientists unprecedented control of matter on the molecular scale. Emerging from this intellectual gold-rush is a new class of materials with astounding properties that sound more at home in a science fiction novel than on the laboratory workbench.

Imagine, for example, a substance with 100 times the strength of steel, yet only 1/6 the weight; materials that instantly heal themselves when punctured; surfaces that can "feel" the forces pressing on them; wires and electronics as tiny as molecules; structural materials that also generate and store electricity; and liquids that can instantly switch to solid and back again at will. All of these materials exist today ... and more are on the way.

more A next-generation minivan? Advanced materials will be essential for making dramatically improved spacecraft possible.

With such mind-boggling materials at hand, building the better spacecraft starts to look not so far fetched after all.

The challenge of the next-generation spacecraft hinges on a few primary issues. First and foremost, of course, is cost.