Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

Originally posted by mistafaz
Does this mean we could travel to the moon in hours?

That would be pretty alright with me.

No, it could actually take longer than with conventional rocket propulsion, because VASIMR rocket has very low thrust. It needs to build up speed slowly, and as such is intended for long interplanetary journeys only. But it could be very efficient for transporting unmanned cargo to the Moon because of its high fuel efficiency - if you can afford to wait at least a month for it, depending on your energy available.

reply to post by justwokeup

We also need a heavy lift chemical rocket big enough to heft a fission reactor into orbit.

And the good news is, recently approved NASA bill has building a heavy lifter as its priority. If everything goes according to the plan, we will have a brand new shuttle-derived HLV capable of lifting 70-110 tons to low Earth orbit ready in 2016.

Thank you President Obama. If not for him shifting focus then NASA would still be experimenting with growing cucumbers on the space station. Or bringing TANG and TOILETS to astronauts using space shuttles.

Now they are focused on getting us to the outer planets.

Awesome! It's just a matter of time that some private entrepeneur will release ads for flights that orbit Mars. Anyone layed off at NASA will still have a marketable skill. Just planes becam privatized, spaceflight will soon be the same. Descendants will tell their children "You know, your great grandfather used to tell me stories of NASA, and how space used to only a government domain." They'll say this as they approach a docking port of Intersolar Space Station Pacifica orbiting Mars. Then, a quick jump on a small shuttle, and to the surface they go!

For comparison, during the 1800s, a train trip from east coast to west took about 21 days!

It took 9 years and five attempts to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable with a lasting connection in 1866!

77 years and thousands of experiments passed between the first incandescent light bulb, 1802, and when Ediso n BOUGHT the patent for his lightbulb in 1879! (Bought it from a Canadian.)

reply to post by Come Clean


Agreed. This is the first plan for NASA thats made any kind of long term sense since the end of Apollo.

Its a pity there is no plan to collaborate in a useful way. I wonder if the Russians kept the plans for the Energia launcher developed for the Buran. In its biggest configuration that was a 200 ton payload capacity. Get lockheed to license it and certify it.

In an ideal world i'd have the russians supply the launcher, the US do the reactor/propulsion and the europeans do the packed lunches. Be on mars in no time :-)

reply to post by justwokeup


From public relations and financial standpoint, it would be a good idea to more or less outsource space nuclear reactor development and launch to China or Russia. Their populations are far less sensitive to anything with "nuclear" in it, and international cooperation is IMHO the only way to succes in bad economic times anyway.

Russians are working on new Angara rocket family capable of up to 40t to LEO, intended to replace their succesful Proton rocket.

I really do think space exploration is for advanced robots. Lets imagine they start real tests in 2014 there will be another 4 years before any flights of significance, let’s say 10 years to be safe. In that time robotics will also advance and when robots can do what we can do or part thereof then it’s in our interest to send robots. There is less overhead, no life support, no critical time schedule, lighter, can get info back by telemetry and well I guess you can think of more. Sure sometimes it’s nice to pick up a rock and bring it back for analysis but a robot will do the analysis even better soon and remember it doesn’t need to come back that’s less overhead again probably half the cost. While we are not worrying about keeping astronauts alive and getting them back alive we are building more robots and sending them on their way.
Moore’s law will see advance micro processing in 10 years they will be even more powerful, smaller consume less energy and perhaps have thinking algorithms allowing decision making for such unmanned flights.
Yes I believe this is what we will see sooner than later.
MJ2

Is this technology not similar to ion propulsion ? it to is a plasma based system .Check it out at

www.space.com...

reply to post by edtheduck


Sort of.

With conventional Ion Engines as fitted to the Hayabusa probe you get a standard Low Thrust but High Specific Impulse system. Very efficient and can run at low thrust levels for long periods. Great for space probes.

With chemical rockets you get High Thrust but Low Specific Impulse. Can generate high thrust levels but for short durations due to the inefficient use of the propellant. Needed for any kind of rapid manoeuvring e.g. change orbits to avoid a collision.

VASMIR (if perfected) allows a measure of both in one engine. You can run it for efficiency or you can run it at higher thrust levels to generate an immediate change.

Thats why its potentially a winner.

Also don't discard nuclear thermal. This is also a winner in terms of thrust and efficiency. It was also demonstrated to work 40 years ago on the NASA NERVA program.

reply to post by justwokeup


Ok thanks I didn't know that about VISMAR ,that it could provide immediate thrust .I always thought that the low start speeds of the ion engine were a drawback . Nuclear sounds great in theory, but there are always the risks involved in getting it out of the atmosphere on top a chemical rocket .

reply to post by edtheduck


You need nuclear to make VASMIR work. Only a proper space fission reactor could generate the power needed.

Getting a fission reactor into orbit need not be unacceptably dangerous if you launch the reactor and fissile material separately. That way you can use an armoured flask on similar principles to what they use to transport radioactive waste by rail. If the launch fails the flask will fall into the sea. Transfer of the fuel elements and bringing the reactor critical can occur in orbit.

The biggest obstacle is the public reaction...OMG Nuclear !! Run away before we start mutating :-)

VASIMR powered by solar energy is also an option, power per kg of nuclear and solar is quite similar I think. Of course, anywhere beyond Mars orbit, nuclear is inevitable.

reply to post by Maslo


Interesting. I didn't think that was the case.

The 39 days VASMIR transit mentioned in the OP needs about 200 Megawatts electrical supply.

I didn't think that was realistic with solar, its pushing technology for nuclear reactors small enough to launch. I admit to not knowing the art of the possible with respect to solar panels though.

Anybody got more information on this one way or the other.

reply to post by justwokeup


For such a high power outputs, nuclear will probably be better IMHO. But research in solar power is advancing rapidly (in contrast to space nuclear), and I believe there is still plenty of power per kg available to be gained. Nuclear reactors need lots of heavy radiators to get rid of waste heat in vacuum of space.
Wiki says that 300 W/kg solar panels are available.

en.wikipedia.org...

Unfortunately, NASA is now forced to focus on asteroids, not explore planets and moons. We should study Mars more, but it doesn't appear the current administration wants to move in that direction.

reply to post by Fury1984


Mars is still on the agenda with the MAVEN probe. Its also the long term goal for humans.

The difference is we will be putting money into the advanced propulsion at last. Rather than a pointless chemical rocket re-tread of Apollo.

At some point we will need to rendezvous and divert an asteroid in deep space. It makes sense to get some practice with one now while refining the tech to get people to mars in sensible timescales.

We could do with spending more, but given thats not going to happen the current plan is better than nothing. Its all the necessary groundwork for the future, even if its not immediately glamorous.

Great find op.

I have noticed that alot of people here have been saying deceleration. I would like to mention there is no such thing as deceleration. An acceleration is a CHANGE in velocity, this could mean an increase, or decrease in speed.(And since velocity is a vector direction as well.

Just thought I would throw that out there.

Originally posted by binomialtheorem
Great find op.

I have noticed that alot of people here have been saying deceleration. I would like to mention there is no such thing as deceleration. An acceleration is a CHANGE in velocity, this could mean an increase, or decrease in speed.(And since velocity is a vector direction as well.

Just thought I would throw that out there.

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