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NASA Plans Test of New Plasma Drive
Sallust writes "Flightglobal has an interesting article about the testing of a new electrically powered plasma engine called the Vasimir. It's being developed by former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and promises to greatly reduce the time and fuel required for interplanetary journeys. According to the article: 'The Vasimir involves the injection of a gas such as hydrogen into an engine that turns it into a plasma. That plasma is then energised further using radio signals as it flows through the engine, a process controlled by electromagnetic waves from superconducting magnets. Accelerated and heated through this process the plasma is focused and directed as exhaust by a magnetic nozzle. Vasimir is many times more efficient than conventional chemical rockets and far less fuel is needed.' The developers are finalising an agreement with NASA to fit a scaled-down version of the engine to the ISS to conduct operational tests. There is also a concept video on YouTube suggesting a journey time for a manned craft to Mars on the order of 60-70 days."
It's stuff like this that makes me happy and brings a huge smile to my face. It also makes my imagination go wild! I hope something like this gets implemented sooner than later.
...have to be playing Magic Carpet Ride
I think the point here is to exploit the recent discovery of water on Mars. With conventional fuels you have to take the return-charge with you. Concepts like these allow them to harvest Hydrogen on Mars for the return trip, which is pretty useful. The painful detail (apart from the complexity) is the mechanism for braking - you're f*d if that fails.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
I wonder, aggregate across the internet - how much storage, energy, and bandwidth is wasted by pointless memes?
... and on the day that the internet crosses some critical threshold in computing and storage capacity and actually becomes a self-aware entity, will it be really annoying?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
You can only put so much current through a busbar. What do you do when a solid copper bar 4 inches across won't carry the power you need? Eventually the size and mass of the busbar required make scaling up in power impractical. For drives, weapons, computer cores, and the like it makes sense.
Of course, that doesn't explain why the bridge consoles exploded regularly - that's just lowest-bidder construction.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.