Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

www.physorg.com

PhysOrg.com) -- Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days.
Wasn't time the whole, main, issue intially? The fact of a 2.5 year run to Mars, and a possiblity to remain there forever?

a month would be.. well extravagent to the mission!!



VENUS NEXT PLEASE ))))))))))))

[edit on 7-10-2009 by CanadianDream420]

Now this is awesome stuff. Coupled with this: Shields For The Starship Enterprise: A Reality?

And this:

US Military using Electromagnetic armor

We have ourselves a truly new space program with far reaching capabilities. Finally a break through!


[edit on 7-10-2009 by projectvxn]

Great find, S+F

I found this schematic of a version of that engine type:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dffa2ddcaf1f.jpg[/atsimg]

Running on hydrogen has other advantages too:

www.daviddarling.info...

The use of hydrogen as the fuel for the VASIMR project has many side benefits. Because hydrogen is available anywhere in the solar system, a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could be launched with only enough fuel to get to its destination, such as Mars, and then pick up more hydrogen upon arrival to serve as fuel for the return trip home. Another benefit is that hydrogen is the best known radiation shield, so the fuel for the VASIMR engine could also be used to protect the crew from harmful effects of radiation exposure during the flight.

So the fuel can double as shielding from radiation? And can be refueled from Mars! Lots of advantages to this design.

Let's hope it works. They didn't say how much thrust that 200 kW test made.

But there's still a ways to go to get to megawatt tests.

lets do it. I volunteer. Hopefully this wont be coopted by black ops and never heard about again. Then again, if their technology is supposedly 10 to 20 years ahead of what the public has, maybe they are already going there.

There is the small matter of scaling up the engine to useful size. That could take some time.

Still, it's intriguing that they've managed to cut down the theoretical time to Mars from 6+ months (and as much as 2 years) to about a month. That could put it into a more practical time frame. It wouldn't necessarily require people to make a one-way trip there, which would increase its popularity.

I wonder what we'll find on Mars...

Great news but i dont believe we will succeed in our ventures to other planets until we learn to look after the one we have.

Sorry to get all ethereal in my view, im not taking anything away from this development in technology, just wanted to voice my heartfelt opinion.

Originally posted by Dreamkidd
Great news but i dont believe we will succeed in our ventures to other planets until we learn to look after the one we have.

Sorry to get all ethereal in my view, im not taking anything away from this development in technology, just wanted to voice my heartfelt opinion.

I agree, and wouldnt doubt if they been using simular technology already.

Originally posted by Totalstranger
lets do it. I volunteer. Hopefully this wont be coopted by black ops and never heard about again. Then again, if their technology is supposedly 10 to 20 years ahead of what the public has, maybe they are already going there.

They have already made a lot of flying saucers from all the reverse engineering of the crashed ships in the last 60 years so chances are very high that they have already been there more than once.

can i sign up for the Spartan-I program now or in 2026

This sounds good in theory, but until it's put to the test who knows if it will work or not. And unfortunately, I doubt it will ever see the light of day due to the politics surrounding the ever sensitive realm of space flight and exploration.

Thanks for posting the article though, this indeed is very interesting.

Originally posted by Dreamkidd
Great news but i dont believe we will succeed in our ventures to other planets until we learn to look after the one we have.

Sorry to get all ethereal in my view, im not taking anything away from this development in technology, just wanted to voice my heartfelt opinion.

We never will, so let's just continue commercially finding ways to get to different planets ourselves, and perhaps you can start a colony of like-minded people.

Have been following this for a while. Great news. I'd love to build one of these on a mini scale, too bad it needs a vacuum.

Finallyyyyyyyyyy, enough of Mars already
let's see some ground images of Jupiter and Saturn now

Mars is so played out right now

Another perspective: At that speed it could go to the moon in 5 hours.

Imagine what we humans could do if we for once in history stopped this silly game of wars and worked together!

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
Finallyyyyyyyyyy, enough of Mars already
let's see some ground images of Jupiter and Saturn now

Jupiter and Saturn have no "ground".
You did know that, right?

The 39-day trip to Mars has a huge caveat. You see, even with chemical rocket it would be possible to travel faster than the usual 2 years, but it would require a prohibitively large amount of energy (the "normal" trajectory is largely ballistic and does not require a lot of fuel for most of the flight duration).

So if you change form one propulsion system to another, this doesn't eliminate the need to store and carry huge amounts of energy in some form.

So I think 39 days is a bluff. They simply calculated the velocity that can be achieved with the plasma drive w/o regard to how to power it.

Thanks for the great article!

Sure they say this is theforefront of tech, but thats because they havnt tried my beef wellington recipe. Its groundbreaking and physics bending!!!!


Thanks again!

reply to post by buddhasystem


If you visit their www homepage they say Less Than 3 Months. So yes, 39 earth days is somewhat of a bluff.