> 90% of it is image processing

While your work looks really nice, I somehow doubt you're writing your own processing pipelines instead of using software someone else has written for that purpose, so majority of the processing is not really "your" work (except for trying to fine-tune parameters). But I might be completely wrong, and you are developing astronomical image processing software yourself.

Effects you describe are not used for propulsion because they are short-range and you can't really for example push away from Earth using magnets. The only practical space-application are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetorquer - electromagnets which can be used to stabilize the spacecraft along magnetic lines.

You can use magnetic forces for some plasma propulsion engines like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster

Pretty much all astronomical data are freely available and anyone can download them. In the past you had to request observing time to look at some specific targets, but right now there is high probability that what you're interested in is already available in the archives.

The problem is actually on the other side -> there aren't enough people or computing resources to scan petabytes of data.

1. Large pieces are tracked and ISS does "debris avoidance manoeuvre" every few months
2. Modules are designed with whipple shields and kevlar blankets to absorb small hyper-velocity impacts
3. Modules can be sealed-off
4. In case of emergency crew is supposed to immediately evacuate

It's not unheard of, there were already Italian ESA astronauts on the ISS outside of ESA allocation, based on some additional deals between ASI and NASA.

> If Americans are paying the bill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Service_Module and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway#Planned_modules

> extra big cameras

A bit pointless on a satellite flying so far up

> kenetic weapons

Similarly a bit pointless to take them to such a high orbit, because it would be very impractical to fire them (more than 1km/s of delta-v for re-entry and it would take long time, so can be spotted)

Compared to other agencies like ESA I would argue that NASA is doing a great job at self-promotion. Lots of Europeans don't even know ESA exists, and 99% won't be able to tell you where any of the sites are located, while most people somehow know about NASA's KSC and JPL.

In terms of scientific organizations I'm not sure if there is one that rivals NASA in terms of recognizability, perhaps CERN, but that's about it.

The issue is SpaceX is a private company and they can do whatever they want. NASA is publicly funded and they have to give a very strict summary of expenses and "making cool videos" is not part of their mandate, so they simply can't spend money on it.

> different kind of cannon

How so? It's a cannon, just with a very long barrel and without the impractical "instant acceleration" issue. It's pretty much the only semi-realistic design.

> that affec any transportation method

Only that it doesn't. Rockets accelerate pretty slowly, at 1.5-2G, so they have no significant issues with crossing through atmosphere or with high-G loads during acceleration.

> if there’s a currently viable solution

Does SpinLaunch count or is it also "different kind of cannon"?

metallic water container is not a very strict definition so it's hard to tell what exactly you mean :)

In order to place something in orbit you need to accelerate it horizontally to about 7.5km/s. The issue of using a "cannon" is that such device applies force only for a very short time when object is moving through the barrel. This means the acceleration has to be extremely high and as a result the applied force has to be very high as well. So your "container" has to be able to withstand compressive stress.

There is another, more problematic issue - once you leave the barrel you hit the atmosphere, and hitting atmosphere when moving at such velocity will cause atmospheric compression and heating (just like when spacecraft come back from orbit) slowing you down. So the container has to be able to withstand the heating, and the cannon has to eject the payload much faster than orbital velocity.

If you can get material like that, then you could launch it in such a way :) However, a more "practical" version of this idea would be to build a very long vacuum tunnel somewhere in high mountains. Long tunnel means you accelerate over longer distance, and if you place the nozzle of the cannon very high (let's say 8km) you hit much thinner atmosphere.

One simple way is pretty much the same as we use to create anti-protons on Earth -> by accelerating protons and colliding them. With enough energy a proton-antiproton pair might be created. This means for example that solar wind (high-energy protons ejected from the sun) can collide with Earth's atmosphere and the collision can create anti-protons. There were even crazy ideas like: http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/1107Jackson.pdf

It can't be copyrighted or patented because math is discovered and not invented. Those theorems were true and "existed in nature" always.

That's a complex question:

• Charged particles passing through certain materials can induce electrical charge, so if you create a grate (lots of crossed strips, once a particle hit one you can see the voltage change) you can figure out where particle hit it. Now you can place multiple of those one after another, and this allows you to see how the particle trajectory was changing (eg. that it was curved)
• Now you can create electrical field between those grates, you can figure out how much this electrical field is bending the particle trajectory (which is proportional to the particle momentum) and in which direction (which is related to the charge)
• Finally you can make impenetrable shield at the very end which will completely stop the particle, and by measuring the impact you can figure out how much energy was this particle carrying.

> we don't have nearly enough rocket fuel

This is completely wrong. Consider that many rockets fly using hydrolox engines -> they burn hydrogen and oxygen (in fact this is the most energetic bi-propellant mixture!). And you can get those by... splitting water :) So no, we're definitely not missing rocket fuel.

The issue is more about how inefficient this is, because fuel is heavy. It's sometimes called "tyranny of rocket equation". Adding more and more fuel to your rocket very quickly no longer provides any gains, because most of the fuel is wasted on lifting the fuel itself. Some sci-fi idea (but founded in science!) how this could be fixed would be to use matter-antimatter as fuel, because the amount of energy you can get from tiny amount of mass is huge.

> Have there been any new discoveries that are leading us to getting off the planet with fewer or different resources needed?

There are some crazy ideas like SpinLaunch, and some new rockets are working with methane instead of kerosene or hydrogen, but this is not really any special "revolution".

There is some new interest in nuclear-thermal rockets, but those are more interesting for travelling around the solar system and not lifting from the ground.