NASA’s New VASIMR Plasma Engine Could Reach Mars in 39 days

[Katashi_itto]

NASA recently provided $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster capable of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA’s funding was part of the “12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership.” Ad Astra’s rocket will travel ten times faster than today’s chemical rockets while using one-tenth the amount of fuel.

The VASIMR system would cut the trip to Mars by months according to Franklin Chang Diaz, a former MIT student, NASA astronaut, and now CEO of Ad Astra.

According to Diaz, “this is like no other rocket that you may have seen in the past. It is a plasma rocket. The VASIMR Rocket is not used for launching things; it is used for things already in orbit. This is called “in-space propulsion.”


http://www.industrytap.com/nasas-new-vasimr-plasma-engine-reach-mars-39-days/33646

[tazkcmo]

1. Thank you!

Excellent information and very exciting!

[roscoeroscoe]

2. We need to stay confident,

Keep working and hold out for breakthroughs like this.

[MohRokTah]

3. EXCELLENT!

We've raped this planet enough.

Let's turn our endeavors towards raping the dead rocks out there for resources and leave this planet alone now.

This sort of propulsion technology can change everything.

All ahead, impulse engines at full.

[Katashi_itto]

4. If it works out, this makes Mars and more importantly Lagrange point 5 viable for colonization.

Not to mention the asteroid belts.

Example: Psyche 16, the giant nickel asteroid could supply all mankind with nickel at the current consumption rates for 1 million years.

16 Psyche is one of the ten most-massive asteroids in the asteroid belt. It is over 200 kilometers in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It is thought to be the exposed iron core of a protoplanet.

[NV Whino]

5. All ahead, warp 6, Mr Sulu

[Octafish]

6. That rocket sounds like it could be applied to moving big rocks out of Earth's way.

Of course, we could apply such for mining platinum and other extractables in space.

[Johonny]

12. If it works as well as it is claimed

It's been around a while now and has potential problems as do most test apparatus. The claim a functioning unit for spacecraft is just around the corner is a claim that, like most research, may never come true.

[hunter]

7. Paddy Neumann's ion engine is pretty nifty too...

He proposes using aluminum collected from orbiting space junk as reaction mass.

http://www.neumannspace.com/2015/12/fuel-of-week-aluminium.html

Personally, I'm not a big fan of manned space exploration. It seems a little pointless and expensive to me, especially as robotics improves.

I figure if we humans survive as a highly technological species then space will belong to our intellectual progeny who will be specifically adapted to space environments; the sorts of people who can run around naked on the surface of mars, just as I can go body surfing at my favorite beaches here on earth. In a thousand years only a few of us ancestral human types will be in space, brought along for the ride like a dog in an automobile.

Maybe even allowed to drive sometimes:

I enjoy Star Trek, but I don't think that's the future.

For one thing, I suspect both "warp drive" and time travel are impossible as conventionally imagined. In this universe once you go somewhere you can never go back. There's only one speed in this universe and that's the speed of light. Everything else is an interference pattern; you, me, the earth, our galaxy, and beyond...

[Katashi_itto]

8. Yes, welll....right...you do realize we arent talking intersellar here right?

The idea of living in a energy rich environment (Space). Where raw resources are highly available, are things that could lead to that sort of Federation style society. All this is quite close and if this or other engines make it available the fact is Humans will initially go out after them if nothing else for profit.

[hunter]

10. I do realize that.

Putting humans in space will never be profitable.

Risking human lives for exploration and science is one thing, putting human lives in grave danger for corporate profits quite another.

If you think working in an underground coal mine is bad, then working in space is worse.

The Martian was a great movie, but interplanetary space and the surface of mars are much more hostile environments than depicted.

[Katashi_itto]

11. Lol...I am going to book mark this.

"humans in space will never be profitable."

You have strange ideas about working conditions in space. As if individuals would be doing the actual mining. Would be a waste of manpower to have someone actually mine when a robot could do that. Less expensive and less dangerous too.

To funny.

[hunter]

15. I'll be in my garden.

[Katashi_itto]

16. Good for you

[Adrahil]

17. It used to be that ocean travel was very dangerous. We did it anyway.

Time to go to Mars.

[lovuian]

9. Awesome news!

Thanks for the article

[Takket]

13. that's definately fast enough to make traveling viable!

[Katashi_itto]

14. Exactly! Puts the NEO asteroid belts within reach.