Ex-Astronaut Developing Plasma Rocket To Revitalize NASA

TechReviewAl writes "Former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz believes that the private sector can revitalize NASA, and his company is developing a plasma rocket to back up that claim. Chang Diaz argues that private industry can be used to develop much of the basic technology needed for space exploration, allowing NASA to focus on more sophisticated and critical components. His company, Ad Astra, is developing a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMR) that will be used to reposition the International Space Station. Last week, the rocket passed an important milestone in testing — reaching 200 kilowatts (enough to move the ISS). A video of the rocket can be seen on Ad Astra's site."

Comments

Not trying to revitalize NASA.

[Aladrin]

He's not trying to revitalize NASA. He's trying to make money from his fancy rocket and saying that he's trying to revitalize NASA as a way to get good press. There's quite a big difference.

If his goal was really to revitalize NASA, he'd sell them at cost to NASA. You can bet that isn't happening.

Re:Another ex-NASA type trying to cash in

[Overzeetop]

So we've got a _really smart_ guy we've paid to educate, paid for many years to perform exactly 7 times, paid to direct a "cool" program, and now that we've shelled out all that money, he's investing some of it in hopes of selling us some product we spent years paying him to learn about.

By the way...how do you amass enough cash to personally invest significantly in this kind of endeavor, considering otherwise "normal" governmental salaries in the 70-130k/year range? Or is he primarily a front man - a very smart one - who is helping to get money from others (perhaps old colleagues with strings to government funds?) to pursue this research.

I'm not saying he's not doing interesting, and possibly valuable, research, but I'm not about to give him a free pass just because he's got a doctorate and a handful of mission patches. Now, if he's made a bunch of money doing other things (dot com bubble investor?), and is pursuing this as a purely speculative path, then good for him.