Boulder scientist Webster Cash said he’s used to being laughed at. Many of his ideas about space exploration raise eyebrows.
The University of Colorado astrophysics professor once proposed a technique for snapping pictures of black holes, which are, by definition, invisible. Response was, well, not exactly enthusiastic, Cash said, with a roll of the eyes.
“NASA people just couldn’t listen to creative solutions,” Cash said. “They didn’t want to hear about innovation, when, of course, that’s what NASA needs.”
Today, the federal space agency is planning a black-hole-hunting mission that draws directly from Cash’s research, which was originally funded by the independently run NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts.
NIAC is holding its seventh annual meeting at Broomfield’s Omni Interlocken Hotel this week. Researchers, including Cash, are discussing their radical ideas for space exploration, concepts that look nothing like the space shuttle or Mars rovers.
Instead, engineers talked about space slingshots miles long, fist- size bouncing-ball robots for exploring caves on Mars, and balloon/ airplane combinations that could move equipment around a distant planet with very little fuel.
“The idea is to develop systems and architecture that are revolutionary, not evolutionary,” Sharon Garrison, NASA’s NIAC coordinator, said at the meeting.
NIAC director Robert Cassanova said the institute’s philosophy was simple: “Don’t let your preoccupation with reality stifle your imagination.”
The institute’s annual budget of approximately $4 million funds about 16 research projects a year, Cassanova said, and the hope is that one or two of them will mature into concepts that attract serious NASA attention.
For example, Cash’s first NIAC proposal, an X-ray interferometer that could capture images of black holes, is now part of NASA’s MAXIM mission, the CU physicist said.
A current NIAC project – Cash’s two-part mission to search “cheaply” for Earthlike planets around distant stars – faces some competition, he said.
The “New Worlds Imager,” Cash said, competes directly with NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder, a mission tentatively scheduled for a 2014 launch.
“This is easy; we could build it tomorrow,” Cash said of his imager. He estimated it would cost about $500 million to build and launch, compared with more than $1 billion expected for NASA’s planned mission.
Initial calculations also suggest his mission could capture images of Earthlike planets far more efficiently than NASA’s, Cash said.
The space agency observes Columbus Day, and officials were unavailable for comment Monday.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
