Posted on 10/14/2004 1:14:50 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new means of propelling spacecraft being developed at the University of Washington could dramatically cut the time needed for astronauts to travel to and from Mars and could make humans a permanent fixture in space.
In fact, with magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or mag-beam, quick trips to distant parts of the solar system could become routine, said Robert Winglee, a UW Earth and space sciences professor who is leading the project.
Currently, using conventional technology and adjusting for the orbits of both the Earth and Mars around the sun, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their scientific mission and return.
"We're trying to get to Mars and back in 90 days," Winglee said. "Our philosophy is that, if it's going to take two-and-a-half years, the chances of a successful mission are pretty low."
Mag-beam is one of 12 proposals that this month began receiving support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Institute for Advanced Concepts. Each gets $75,000 for a six-month study to validate the concept and identify challenges in developing it. Projects that make it through that phase are eligible for as much as $400,000 more over two years.
Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam. Winglee estimates that a control nozzle 32 meters wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometers per second. That translates to more than 26,000 miles an hour or more than 625,000 miles a day.
Mars is an average of 48 million miles from Earth, though the distance can vary greatly depending on where the two planets are in their orbits around the sun. At that distance, a spacecraft traveling 625,000 miles a day would take more than 76 days to get to the red planet. But Winglee is working on ways to devise even greater speeds so the round trip could be accomplished in three months.
But to make such high speeds practical, another plasma unit must be stationed on a platform at the other end of the trip to apply brakes to the spacecraft.
"Rather than a spacecraft having to carry these big powerful propulsion units, you can have much smaller payloads," he said.
Winglee envisions units being placed around the solar system by missions already planned by NASA. One could be used as an integral part of a research mission to Jupiter, for instance, and then left in orbit there when the mission is completed. Units placed farther out in the solar system would use nuclear power to create the ionized plasma; those closer to the sun would be able to use electricity generated by solar panels.
The mag-beam concept grew out of an earlier effort Winglee led to develop a system called mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion. In that system, a plasma bubble would be created around a spacecraft and sail on the solar wind. The mag-beam concept removes reliance on the solar wind, replacing it with a plasma beam that can be controlled for strength and direction.
A mag-beam test mission could be possible within five years if financial support remains consistent, he said. The project will be among the topics during the sixth annual NASA Advanced Concepts Institute meeting Tuesday and Wednesday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seattle. The meeting is free and open to the public.
Winglee acknowledges that it would take an initial investment of billions of dollars to place stations around the solar system. But once they are in place, their power sources should allow them to generate plasma indefinitely. The system ultimately would reduce spacecraft costs, since individual craft would no longer have to carry their own propulsion systems. They would get up to speed quickly with a strong push from a plasma station, then coast at high speed until they reach their destination, where they would be slowed by another plasma station.
"This would facilitate a permanent human presence in space," Winglee said. "That's what we are trying to get to."
All your Martian commercial properties are belong to us!
Nearly everything
that can be used as a drive
can be a weapon.
Larry Niven once
wrote a short story about
how a "weaponless"
Earth ship was attacked
by a Kzin warship. Tough luck
for the Kzin, because
the Earth ship had a
really powerful magnet
for their ramjet drive . . .
My thought exactly.
Now, if they based the generator on the moon, that would be feasible for the outbound trip (the effects shouldn't become pronounced for thousands of years, anyway). But on the Mars side, they'd have few choices. Even if the rotations of Deimos and Phobos weren't a problem, their masses are small enough that this sort of constant gentle force could begin to perturb their orbits.
Conceptually - they could use aerobraking in the upper Martian atmosphere to decelerate. And if we can get really wacky - when ready to return they can head away from the Earth - get re-accelerated by the beam - and hope Jupiter is somewhere out there to use the bank shot effect - doing a tight 180 around Jupiter as if in a highly elliptical orbit - to reverse direction while conserving velocity. Just conjecture though...
....also, depending on the complexity of assembly, the vehicle itself could conceivably carry along the basic elements necessary to assemble a similar beam generator on Mars to facilitate the return trip, using local material mass for the bulk of it. Again...totally off the wall conjecture.
If you "balanced" the thrust by using the rotations (and multiple thrusters, though the thrust would be intermittent), you could avoid that problem.
58 - Thanks for the ping.
It seems like this type of drive would 'microwave' or 'plazma wave' the occupants of any such space ship. If it can drive a ship, it should also cook the ship contents.
Winglee has been around with this idea for years. It is not new. It IS his idea, but he keeps shopping it around and nobody bites. I find it droll that this is being touted as 'breakthrough' technology...
Awesome stuff. Great news.
It's true that the "beam and sail" concept isn't new. I've read about in SF for decades. But it's a bit of a breakthrough -- although perhaps only a bureaucratic breakthrough -- to get it developed at the engineering level.
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