Hackspace Video

[Colin Wright]

Hi there,
I have been commissioned to make a video of the Hackspace for BBC News. Who is the best person to chat to about this? Could someone show me around? Also we are interested in having a demonstration of the Makerbot.

Regards,
Colin Wright

[Jonty Wareing]

Colin has contacted me offlist about this.

--jonty

[Jasper Wallace]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2012, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:

> Hi Colin,
> Could you share your contact for the BBC? I'm the UK Project Lead of SpaceGAMBIT (www.spacegambit.org) and we're
> officially launching soon (writing the press release now). In short we're a global alliance of hackerspaces building
> technologies to get humanity to the stars. We got a 500,000 USD grant from DARPA to do so. I'm currently in Shanghai
> but will relocate back to the UK soon. Having someone at the beeb who's sympathetic to hackerspaces would kick all
> kinds of ass.

$500k? wow!

I've been interested in trying to pass the fertility test, see:

http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM56.html#56

diagram 5.29 which is whithin the spaces capabilities (just about!)

you'll need a solar system scale economy before trying to build an
intersteller probe :)

> Cheers,
> Alex C-G

--
[http://pointless.net/] [0x2ECA0975]

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

While I'm cautious hearing DARPAs name, if it's an unconditional grant,
then wonderful! It sounds like a great idea.

It'd be amazing if the high-vacuum station gets used to further this goal.

On 28/09/2012 08:20, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:
> Hi Colin,
>
> Could you share your contact for the BBC? I'm the UK Project Lead of
> SpaceGAMBIT (www.spacegambit.org) and we're officially launching soon
> (writing the press release now). In short we're a global alliance of
> hackerspaces building technologies to get humanity to the stars. We got
> a 500,000 USD grant from DARPA to do so. I'm currently in Shanghai but
> will relocate back to the UK soon. Having someone at the beeb who's
> sympathetic to hackerspaces would kick all kinds of ass.
>

> Cheers,
> Alex C-G
>
> On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:58:10 PM UTC+8, Colin Wright wrote:
>

[Alex Cureton-Griffiths]

It's pretty much no-strings. Only things we are required to do are to give DARPA Government Purposing Rights over regular reports of how we're spending the loot and organising our organisation. We're also bound by ITAR regulations which mean it'll be tough to do anything like propulsion, rockets, spacesuits, etc, in an international, open-source context. But we can do habitats, testing equipment, and lots of other stuff. This will be clarified in a few weeks when we have our kick-off meeting with DARPA.

High vacuum station sounds awesome - we've been kicking around the idea of doing some nanosatellite testing equipment, and naturally one of the things we'd need to test is operating in a vacuum. What's the progress with the project? In a few months we'll be looking at accepting proposals for grants, so might be something to think about :) 

[Alex Cureton-Griffiths]

Wow, that's an in-depth document. I'll try to catch up with it later after a few coffees!

Re: Interstellar probes, there are people working on it now (large theoretical), like Project Icarus, 100 Year Starship. The 'interstellar' in our name is more of a long, long, long-term goal than anything we can achieve within our initial 2 year grant period. If only warp drive would be developed sooner...

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

Yes, ITAR is troublesome though I'm surprised to hear it covers
spacesuits in addition to vehicles/guidance. The limitations on what you
can communicate across international borders can be a big dampener;
making things to use in space but not being allowed to make the things
to actually get there to use them.
Is Copenhagen Sub-orbitals getting around this simply by using old
enough technologies?

Will the full wording of the grant agreement be released, or just a summary?

The vac-station is slowly coming together. The main problems so far have
been running out of welding supplies and finding the correct
imperial-sized fixings for the donated pump manifolds.
http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/High_Vacuum_Station

We have most of the major parts, but we're going to need the
TIG/plama-cutter back to make some custom parts like the bell-jar
flange, the lathe working for others, as well as some more stock bits
like hoses, feedthroughs, pump-oil and gaskets. Once it's operable under
manual control I'll be working on automating it to make it less
susceptible to accidental damage.

It should be able to take a 10" bell-jar directly down to 5x10^-7 mbar,
though I have an 18" chamber I'd like to connect to the auxiliary vacuum
port for experiments in vacuum sintered printing.

On 29/09/2012 02:50, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:
> It's pretty much no-strings. Only things we are required to do are to
> give DARPA Government Purposing Rights over regular reports of how we're
> spending the loot and organising our organisation. We're also bound by
> ITAR regulations which mean it'll be tough to do anything like
> propulsion, rockets, spacesuits, etc, in an international, open-source
> context. But we can do habitats, testing equipment, and lots of other
> stuff. This will be clarified in a few weeks when we have our kick-off
> meeting with DARPA.
>
> High vacuum station sounds awesome - we've been kicking around the idea
> of doing some nanosatellite testing equipment, and naturally one of the
> things we'd need to test is operating in a vacuum. What's the progress
> with the project? In a few months we'll be looking at accepting
> proposals for grants, so might be something to think about :)
>
> On Saturday, September 29, 2012 7:51:00 AM UTC+8, Sci wrote:
>
> While I'm cautious hearing DARPAs name, if it's an unconditional grant,
> then wonderful! It sounds like a great idea.
>
> It'd be amazing if the high-vacuum station gets used to further this
> goal.
>
> On 28/09/2012 08:20, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:
> > Hi Colin,
> >
> > Could you share your contact for the BBC? I'm the UK Project Lead of

> > SpaceGAMBIT (www.spacegambit.org <http://www.spacegambit.org>)

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

Doing some back-of-google calculations, the 500Kg exotic matter
requirement (presuming exotic matter also follows E=Mc^2) comes in at
12,492,764,000,000kW-h. So that's about twelve and a half trillion
kilowatt hours worth of mass/energy.

12,493TWh
Apparently the 2008 worldwide energy consumption was 132,000TWh. So the
human race as a whole is roughly inside the needed energy bracket.
That's some encouragement.

And strictly speaking I don't think you actually need 500Kg of the
actual exotic matter, do you? I mean if the Higgs boson idea plays out,
then you'd really only need it's counterpart to create the effect of
negative mass and not the rest of the atom, right?

Now I may be rambling here as I only have the softest grasp on the
physics involved, but bosons can be forced into a shared quantum state
such as bose-einstein condensate, right?
Could a captured particle of anti-matter be cooled to low enough
temperate along with a matter particle of differing type within the same
condensate without annihilating? Would it be possible to switch the
quantum state of the mass boson in the matter component to match that in
the anti-matter component? Sort of create a hybrid atom, the same as
regular matter but with it's mass component reversed?

I suspect I'm grossly over-simplifying the concept of the quantum-state.
I can't see anything online relating to an "anti-higgs" though, so can
only presume a negative mass would be a state of the particle rather
than a separate one. And it sounds like states can be shared across
particles entering superfluids.

I don't actually expect an explanation of how I'm wrong, since I doubt
I'd understand it. :P

On 29/09/2012 02:54, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:
> Wow, that's an in-depth document. I'll try to catch up with it later
> after a few coffees!
>
> Re: Interstellar probes, there are people working on it now (large
> theoretical), like Project Icarus, 100 Year Starship. The 'interstellar'
> in our name is more of a long, long, long-term goal than anything we can
> achieve within our initial 2 year grant period. If only warp drive would
> be developed sooner...
>
> On Friday, September 28, 2012 10:34:05 PM UTC+8, jasper wrote:
>
> On Fri, 28 Sep 2012, Alex Cureton-Griffiths wrote:
>
> > Hi Colin,
> > Could you share your contact for the BBC? I'm the UK Project Lead

> of SpaceGAMBIT (www.spacegambit.org <http://www.spacegambit.org>)

[SamLR]

On 30 September 2012 03:08, Peter "Sci" Turpin <s...@sci-fi-fox.com> wrote:

And strictly speaking I don't think you actually need 500Kg of the actual exotic matter, do you? I mean if the Higgs boson idea plays out, then you'd really only need it's counterpart to create the effect of negative mass and not the rest of the atom, right?

Sorry this is wrong. 

Firstly unless (a specific type of) super symmetry ends up being right the higgs is electrically neutral so doesn't have an anti-particle, in the same way there aren't anti-photons. 

Secondly even if we were in a charged-Higgs SUSY universe then an anti higgs still wouldn't supply anti-mass. It would just have the opposite electrical charge, sorry. 

As far as physics is aware there is no source of anti-mass, there are some theories that predict it but its never been observed and most situations it would exist in aren't likely to be something you can dump on a spacecraft.

Now I may be rambling here as I only have the softest grasp on the physics involved, but bosons can be forced into a shared quantum state such as bose-einstein condensate, right?

Yes

 

Could a captured particle of anti-matter be cooled to low enough temperate along with a matter particle of differing type within the same condensate without annihilating?

Yes but the only charged bosons that could cool would be the W± or the Z0, both of which have very short lifetimes (i.e. they barely exist before they decay). 

 

Would it be possible to switch the quantum state of the mass boson in the matter component to match that in the anti-matter component? Sort of create a hybrid atom, the same as regular matter but with it's mass component reversed?

no idea but I suspect 'no'

 

I suspect I'm grossly over-simplifying the concept of the quantum-state. I can't see anything online relating to an "anti-higgs" though, so can only presume a negative mass would be a state of the particle rather than a separate one. And it sounds like states can be shared across particles entering superfluids.

See previous comments re negative mass

 

I don't actually expect an explanation of how I'm wrong, since I doubt I'd understand it. :P

hope it makes sense

S

[Alex Cureton-Griffiths]

Wow. This thread is getting beyond my comprehension level now :) I was just thinking, how about copying it over to the SpaceGAMBIT public list? We have some peeps from NASA and all kinds of other experts on there. It's at lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram if you wanna take part (it still uses the old name of hackerspace space program, not SpaceGAMBIT)

We've also got some guys kicking around the idea of working on quaternion equations and Maxwell's EM theory, for those who want to get their maths on (intro to those at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t95xWsxqNvI)