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To Mars and Back in Ninety Days
paltemalte writes "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."
This is fine and well, but how does one meanwhile solves the most pressing problem, that is, providing CHEAP and RELIABLE means to get into earth orbit???
Sign me up, should this ever become a reality. However, the only way space travel will become an everyday occrance is if it is profitable. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to do it for the sake of doing it. But people aren't willing to spend millions/billions/trillions of dollars to do something just because "its there".
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
What's all this about a "new method" being required for short trips to Mars? What about the 101 old methods we have? Nuclear Thermal, Nuclear Electric, Orion, Laser Lifters, Nuclear Salt Water (this seriously needs to be developed!), Fission Fragment engines, Nuclear Steam ships, etc, etc, etc.
We've got high powered propulsion options pouring out of our ears. It all comes down to getting funding. Wave a plan near congress and they're sure to kill it before breakfast.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What are they looking at in creating particle or at least micrometeorite ablative shielding that can handle the increased velocity these hazards will bring with the increased speeds?
right now our spacecraft are basically beer cans with insualtion and windows, any tiny object at any decent velocity can rip through them like tissue paper. on a long distance mission as a trip to mars would be, we need a craft that is at least 100 times stronger than anything we launch now which would make it more than that many times heavier.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I poo-poo your silly idea Philleas Fog.. It's impossible and I'll wager my reputation that you won't make it from the Gentleman's Club in London to Mars and back within 90 days!
I hate to be a buzzkill, but is there ANY realistic reason why sending people to Mars is good science?
It seems that if we spend the money that it would take to develop the spacecraft & lifesupport required to send people that far on better and more reliable robots, a lot more actual research would get done. Heck, we might even have enough left over to fix the Hubble.
Let's work on practical reasons to send people into space at all... then maybe the moon. Billions of tax dollars shouldn't be blown on a project of little scientific validity just because "it's cool."
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I barely got the page to load... here's the article text: 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." Love, Tripptdf
after actually /reading/ the article, they have a plan in place to "slow down" the approaching spacecraft...namely another plasma shooter at the other end. I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe if there was a conventional backup solution like thrusters or something...I dunno. Thrusters might slow you down enough to navigate into orbit, but a highspeed orbit would probably be dangerously close to the atmosphere...
W.W.K.D
What Would Kirk Do?
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Wave a plan near congress and they're sure to kill it before breakfast.
Sure they will. The aliens don't want our crap in outer space at least until we can handle our problems like adult persons instead of reacting emotionally to every single difference between us. So, what's better than keep tabs in the govment of the only country that can fund such stuff?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The article mentions having one station here and another on the other side, so that the craft itself need not carry its own propulsion.
However, any sort of malfunction - from the braking side not firing at the right time, to the braking side getting knocked off angle by a micrometeorite at the wrong moment, to the craft itself getting pushed off course - would mean that the craft itself would go hurtling through space with no real chance to be rescued.
The way around this? Keep an on-board propulsion system that's able to slow it down from full-speed back to 0, and then speed it up enough to get back to where you were going originally in a reasonable amount of time.
Which kind of defeats the purpose of the entire method.
That green slime had it coming.
Just send a diplomat to Mars, establish a trade agreement and an alliance with them and build a road.
Then we can quickly invade when they least expect it. When you play enough Rome Total War these things become soooo obvious.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Speed is relative. Meteors (including micrometeors) often travel 100's of thousands of miles an hour w/respect to the EARTH. A measly 20-40 thousand mph difference in ship speed isn't going to make much difference to one of these bad boys.
- The race is not [always] to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. -
You can always spin the spacecraft around. That's exactly what they do/did with the Space shuttle. You may be traveling at an obscenely high rate of speed, but you have 360/360 degrees of freedom for attitude. Haven't you ever played Asteroids?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Can anyone tell me how the "pusher" satellite in the picture is supposed to work? I see one beam of energy with enough force to accelerate a spacecraft with a lot of force. Either there's an invisible other beam balancing this out, scorching the Earth underneath, or the satellite is doing a much better job of propelling itself out of the solar system than it is pushing the distant spacecraft where it's supposed to go. Or has someone figured out how to suspend Newton's second law?
The big "breakthtrough" here is to decouple the propulsion system (the plasma beam) from the spacecraft. That makes the craft smaller and lighter since it doesn't have to move all that fuel around.
HOWEVER...
This system requires having another plasm beam generator to "catch" the spacecraft and slow it down with another plasma beam. That means not only sending the generator platform to Mars, but also all of the material from which to make the plasma (most likely nitrogen or one of the heavier noble gases). The generator platform needs a power source capable of sustaing the creating and acceleration of the plasma beam, which means nuclear, and a fission nuclear reaction, not radiothermic generation. All of that means a technically complex space station, with people to keep it running. To have such a system in Earth orbit would be tough enough. The cost and difficulty of shipping all of that material out to a Mars orbit, and maintaining it so it will be ready to deccelerate an incoming spacecraft would be Absolutely Enormous.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Early space related centrifuge tests performed at WADC
In 1952, E. R. Ballinger, leader of the research program at Wright-Patterson, conducted one of the earliest series of centrifuge tests directed expressly toward the problem of g forces in space flight. Ballinger found that 3 g applied transversely would be the ideal takeoff pattern from the physiological standpoint, but he realized that the rocket burning time and velocity for such a pattern would be insufficient to propel a spacecraft out of the atmosphere. Consequently he and his associates subjected men to gradually increasing g loads, building to peaks of 10 g for something over two minutes. Chest pain, shortness of breath, and occasional loss of consciousness were the symptoms of those subjected to the higher g loads. The tests led Ballinger to the conclusion that 8 g represented the acceleration safety limit for a space passenger.
They will have to spread the acceleration and deceleration down over a few miles
And no, spacecraft right now are NOT beer cans. They contain an outer shell, and several layers of different material to prevent micrometeriods from penetrating the pressure hull. Windows are specially designed, and if you pay attention to photographs from spacecraft you would see tons of scratches on the outer surface.
Guess what they are from?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
What about wrapping around the screen though?
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You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Do not trust the pusher satellite. Pushing will protect you from the terrible secret of space. Do you have stairs at your house?
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Scientists have come up with a cheap and reusable method of getting to orbit and traveling about the cosmose. Utilizing the effect of slashdotting a website, we beam those hits against a reflective matterial on the space craft that will allow network packets to propell it in to orbit and beyond. To slow down a craft ariving at it's destination, a special set of mirrors will be setup to redirect traffic to the front of the ship where another reflector will slow down the craft...
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
A NERVA, starting from LEO could match that speed with a mass ratio of 2.7 or thereabouts.
In other words, it's not really terribly fast by the standards of the solar system.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Since the plasma is basically 'free' once the station is operational, merely direct an equal amount of plasma in the oppposite plane to the direction required for propulsion - the station would remain motionless, relatively. Mind you, I'd be carefull approaching the back door...
The last fucking thing you want is my undivided attention...
Not quite. It is in fact the kinetic energy of the plasma that is being transferred to the spacecraft; the electrical interaction is just the transfer mechanism. So, yes, the space station will be pushed back in a fashion more or less prescribed by Newton's 3rd Law. However, as mentioned above, the acceleration produced by the conservation of momentum is proportional to the mass, so if the space station is massive enough, this won't be a problem. Plus, I'm sure some corrective measures can be taken with orbits to minimize the effect.
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)
Because we all know that the steam engine, the universal governor, the printing press, the cotton gin, the combine, the internal combustion engine, the Model T, the airplane, the transistor, the integrated circuit, the telephone, the chemical battery, the capacitor, the steam tubine, the incadescent light, the phonograph, the film projector, the Compact Disk, and the mechanical loom are all examples of not much happening in the world because of the guiding principle of life being profit.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Imagine when 80 days around the world was an extraordinary and unbelievable accomplishment, now it seems that something as odd as 80 days around the solar system may be laughed at in a 100 years time.
In todays world, I cannot imagine how restrictive travel must have been, in tomorrows, they will pity us with our cars and segways!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I'm not going to analyze every single item on your list...
But the Printing Press? Did you think this through? Do you really think Johann Gutenberg's motivation was profit??? Have you ever read Henry Ford's writings on business organization? He was a far more ardent critic of international finance than me.
I think you need to read a little more about the people who invented the items you are discussing. Most were invented by men who followed their dreams and were hardly concerned with financial gains. More importantly, financial concerns did not dictate whether or IF they pursued that dream.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
NASA has this page explaining the physics and why it granted the money to the UWash research team. And the NASA page responds...The UWASH page pointed to by the article is somewhere behind a cloud of smoke coming out of their poor slashdotted server. 350 comments later, I still cant raise it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I am ignorant of the forces used in this technology, but if I am correct...
You have a space plasma generator orbiting the sun that will push payloads into a Mars-intercepting trajectory. OK, fine and dandy.
Now, if it's shooting all this high energy plasma out one end, won't there be a reaction of its own in the opposite direction, effectively causing the force on the payload to be cut in half, while also shooting itslef way the heck out of the original "stationary" orbit? I'm sure someone smarter than me has already thought of this, I just can't see the solution.