Astronaut invents new plasma drive to take us to Mars and beyond

[Gil Bavel]

My dad told me about this tonight... I was stunned, until I read the article, and found it was true!

Now, instead of six moths to go to Mars--it will take 39 days.

Here's the link:

Elon Musk might deliver new plasma drive to ISS • The Register

Discuss.

 

[Tommy Allison]

When was the last time a "Scientist" did anything for us?

Oh wait... Whoops.

This astronaut and SCIENTIST, actually knows what he's talking about. Wow, imagine going to Mars in 39 days. That would mean the Moon would be reachable with a lot less fuss. Then imagine the moon being a base to launch from, we could get there even faster.

 

[showflake]

There are many types of alternative (alt. to combustion rockets) thrusters in one or the other stage of development or production. Most of them are some variations of ion engine concept. VASIMR is not a new thing, but was never used on an actual project. But Ion engines in general were used (in space, not for liftoff), not all spacecraft are chemical rockets.

The problem with these kinds of machines is high energy requirements. They essentially run on electricity, and you need a power plant to get anything heavier moving.

You could not use such a thing to lift a space shuttle into orbit (unless you had Terawatts of electricity on your disposal, which you don't). But you can use it to move around satellites(with solar power)

In SF movies like Star Wars, you get these huge ships with ion engines, but to move such a large thing with ion engines, you would need to trap a small dwarf star to get enough power to accelerate such a ship at even 1G

 

[Smugallo]

To Mars in 39 days! Still a few hurdles to get around though. It won't be easy for them to get a Nuclear Reactor into space for the Mars journey, also, they would need some kind of shielding because the faster the vessel goes, the faster stuff will hit it.

 

[Gil Bavel]

To Mars in 39 days! Still a few hurdles to get around though. It won't be easy for them to get a Nuclear Reactor into space for the Mars journey, also, they would need some kind of shielding because the faster the vessel goes, the faster stuff will hit it.

I think having a nuclear reactor attached to the plasma drive would be a good tradeoff for being able to reach Mars in 39 days. The huge risks to the crew en route are reduced to almost negligible by the shorter trip time.

Actually, this wouldn't be the first spacecraft that had a nuclear reactor.

There was a big fuss when Cassini was launched because it had "72 pounds of plutonium" on board:

<nobr>Many technologies are critical to the space program. Reliable, cost-effective launch systems, large</nobr>
<nobr>data-bandwidth capabilities, and light weight materials are three ‘technologies’ that were invented for</nobr>
<nobr>the U.S. space program. However, the nuclear power supplies, called here space nuclear power</nobr>
<nobr>(SNP) to differentiate them from terrestrial applications of nuclear energy, are considered the enabling</nobr>
<nobr>technologies for deep space exploration (AIAA 1995). To put it simply, there are no other</nobr>
<nobr>technologies available now, or in the next ten to fifteen years, that can provide adequate electrical power</nobr>
<nobr>to spacecraft and experiments, for exploration outside of Earth orbit. For example, in a recent gathering</nobr>
<nobr>protesting the Cassini flyby, a former NASA astronaut reminded the protestors (Franklin Chang Diaz,</nobr>
<nobr>July 23, 1999, as quoted on Space.com in an article by G.T. Whitesides)</nobr>

The whole PDF is here:

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-120899-134345/unrestricted/05chapter_2.pdf

I was very surprised to learn just how many space shots have gone up (and come down!) with plutonium aboard:

Nuclear menace in Outer Space by Karl Grossman

I remember there were some pretty testy protesters (hehe) once they learned about it.

 

[tiffanyR]

That's a good news, we can go to mars hope its the same as Earth.

But right now i would like to do my best in the contest of Space Needle. For its 50th anniversary, the Space Needle is sponsoring a rivalry with a distinctive prize. The champion will be flown into outer space. The proof is here: Space Needle competition promises to put the winner in space

 

[dyingsun]

I, for one, wouldn't want to fly into space sponsored by a Space Needle, no offense to the Space Needle though. Must be sad to be the only needle from space and end up in that rainy weather.

Poor Space Needle.

 

[Randall]

Something interesting I just got from that "Ask A Physicist" website, is that with enough fuel, a plain old chemical rocket engine could get you to a considerable fraction of the speed of light. To quote: "The only 'speed limit' for a rocket is the speed of light. If you have fuel, you can always increase the velocity of the rocket." I wonder what Friedman would say about that.

j.r.

 

[dyingsun]

Well, i think that is a no-brainer somewhat (not to discount it by all means), I'd wonder what a a structured craft/probe like that would look like though.

 

[vonmazur]

72 Pounds of Plutonium? OK, I went to Nuke school...critical mass is a lot less than that....The artillery rounds were nowhere near that much...The shielding would have made the darned thing mighty heavy...Maybe it was 72 pounds of a other metals or materiels with plutonium as the nuclear fuel...??

You could not put 72 pounds of that stuff in a small vehicle without some serious problems...

I will have to go and research this!

ETA: Plutonium Dioxide, non weapons grade, stored in super duper cannisters...You guys had me all worked up!!! Thermolelectric generation device..

Now if you have a real reactor, that is going to be a problem, which I think they covered in the 1950's. They had a B-36 that flew out of Ft Worth TX with a real live reactor in it..."Convair Nuclear Crusader" Just imagine today if they wanted to do that...Everyone would go ballistic!

Dale

 

[Wade]

I was going to start a new thread but this looked similar to what i was about to post about and i'm sure this is not an original idea but did a forum search and didn't come up with anything conclusive. it may have a bit of an off topic factor but just a bit so my apologies if i hijacked (?) a thread

i found myself thinkng the other day about the future..or lack of future...at nasa when it comes to future exploration of space . More to the point, it would seem we are now taking a back seat to the chinese, russians and even the indians as paying passengers on their vessels but are we?


I thought what if a part of nasa went black...maybe there always was a black nasa, Mr. Hoagland is sure to agree on that point... and looked into deep space travel via astral travel or remote viewing

i think most people would agree until we get out of our antiquated (read; dated, expensive and somewhat inefficient) way of moving our people through space (ion proplulsion maybe ?) and the horrendously long time it would take to get them there, wherever "there" is, and the consequences of long term exposure to cosmic rays (transhumanism anyone?) we need to keep up with the jones's lest we become complacent and forever doomed to being back seat passengers, and that maybe astral travel would be a good alternative. let somebody else spend billions of dollars on better engines and alternative-humans sturdy enough for the rigors of months or years in space, we would go the psi- route until deep space travel is more cost efficent

for my part i typed "psinauts" in google and got a coffeehouse in amsterdamn (natch) and "astralnauts" bought up a bunch of hits that looked like the work of science fiction wanna-bes, new age-y gibberish and crackpots fishing for attention....Yeah, i'll probably get flammed for writing this... so if anyone knows the name of someone who is of
good reputation that has written or spoken of this i would appreciate knowing, maybe michio kaku (he had a book a few years ago if i recall that dealt with not-quite-there-physics i've yet to read) i did read tracks and the psychic wilderness and was pretty impressed by mr. graff. he seems pretty reputable to me does anyone have any insight on him? there is some noted physicist, whose name i've forgotten , rudy ******* doesn't he have a foot in the world of standard physics and a foot in the world of the paranormal?

i am not at all interested in anything ed dames has to say about this

p.s. message to the moderators, now that i've "earned" the title of paranormal maven, too soon imho, can we make it paranormal pundit ?, they're basically the same and i like the double barreled "P" '

 

[Xylo]

Something interesting I just got from that "Ask A Physicist" website, is that with enough fuel, a plain old chemical rocket engine could get you to a considerable fraction of the speed of light. To quote: "The only 'speed limit' for a rocket is the speed of light. If you have fuel, you can always increase the velocity of the rocket." I wonder what Friedman would say about that.

j.r.

Probably the same thing that Einstein said...something about the mass of the fuel increasing exponentially in proportion to the closer one gets to the speed of light... Something along the lines of E=mc2 or something like that.