Cool
To Mars and back in 78 days, neat.
Too bad Mars does not have much atmosphere. It’s kind of wasteful to have to spend half the voyage braking if there were some other way to achieve the deceleration needed at the end.
The very high speed could spell trouble for the craft if encountering a bit of asteroid or comet dust. I’d want to send the first few to Mars unmanned to make sure it could be safely done.
There was a thread yesterday on HAARP which mentioned plasma, magnetic fields and charged ions..........Wonder if there's a connection between the two?
This theory was tested on the big centrifuge at Johnsville PA in the late 1950s. Dr. Clark a researcher there believed man could reach Mars in 46 hours if he were under constant acceleration for half the trip and deceleration for half. This would subject an astronaut to 2 Gs for the entire trip. Dr. Clark brought his recliner in from home and rode the machine for 24 straight hours and proved it could be tolerated. By the way the building is now under conversion to a museum. If anyone should want to see the monster machine they can check the website www.nadcmuseum.org for details.
...of course, it’ll shred a human body to bits moving that fast, but we’re working the bugs out...
The Ad Astra Rocket Company tested a plasma rocket called the VASIMR VX-200 engine, which ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. "It's the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now," says Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut and CEO of Ad Astra. The company has also signed an agreement with NASA to test a 200-kilowatt VASIMR engine on the International Space Station in 2013. The tests on the ISS would provide periodic boosts to the space station, which gradually drops in altitude due to atmospheric drag. ISS boosts are currently provided by spacecraft with conventional thrusters, which consume about 7.5 tons of propellant per year. By cutting this amount down to 0.3 tons, Chang-Diaz estimates that VASIMR could save NASA millions of dollars per year.The best way to save NASA millions of dollars per year is to stop collaborating with enemies of the United States of America, er, I mean, stop throwing good money after bad.