Interstellar travel within a human lifetime is currently well without reach using present physics and engineering capabilities – it may very well be impossible. Many technologies that we use today may have been impossible not too long ago, so are there any technologies on the horizon that can revolutionize space travel? At TU Dresden, we have been building the world’s best thrust balances to assess claims from the literature credibly and test in regimes that have not been accessible. WARP drive, here we come …
(Image: NASA/ESA, https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubbles-new-shot-of-proxima-centauri-our-nearest-neighbor/)
About the speaker
Prof. Tajmar obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc. in physics and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and an M.Sc. in space studies from the International Space University Strasbourg, France. In 1999, he joined the European Space Agency ESA as a Young-Graduate-Trainee in the Electric Propulsion Section. In 2000, he moved to the Austrian Institute of Technology, where he was appointed Head of the Space Propulsion & Advanced Concepts Department in 2005. From[masked], he was an Associate Professor for Aerospace Engineering at KAIST in Korea. In 2012, he was appointed Full Professor and Head of the Space Systems Chair at Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) in Germany, developing electric/advanced propulsion, innovative power and microsatellite solutions. Since 2014, he is the director of the aerospace engineering institute at TU Dresden.