Real Life Star Trek: DARPA Rewards VULCAN Engine Contracts
Filed under: Future Weapons, Outer Space, Science, Science Fiction, Technology, The Future
Right before the release of J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency kicks off their VULCAN Engine Program by rewarding four contractors with funding to begin first phase development of the proposed super engine system.
When we hear the word Vulcan, our thoughts wander to the Star Trek character Spock, his home planet, and his people. The VULCAN Engine Program is appropriately named since it is a “propulsion system demonstration effort to design, build, and ground-test an engine capable of accelerating a full-scale hypersonic vehicle from rest to Mach 4+.”
This could be our first steps towards a “warp drive” propulsion system like the one that propels the Enterprise across vast distances in space.
Read the DARPA News Release here (via DARPA’s news room.)
DARPA Launches All Seeing Eye Into Stratosphere
Filed under: Conspiracies, Future Weapons, Government, Science, Science Fiction, Technology, The Future
Another step towards floating cities or Big Brother? You decide.
DARPA is moving project ISIS into its demonstration phase. ISIS (Integrated Sensor Is Structure) is a military project with goals to launch an autonomous statospheric-based airship equipped with supercharged sensors for surveillance. The lightweight structure will hover high above earth for years and be capable of tracking objects as small as a child from up to 300 km away.
But, the idea of hovering surveillance structures troubles privacy groups like the Anti-Satellite Sympathizers. A.S.S. founder and president Neil Kaminskigee said the following: “It’s just one more step towards a totalitarian police state, in which every square inch of earth has a dedicated ’surveillance camera’ to watch over citizens.”
Others see this as another step towards floating airbases and cities. Population control organizations have promoted the idea of permanent, stratosphere based structures to help alleviate overcrowding on the surface of our planet.
Read the press release from DARPA here.