Space Odyssey 2: Plasma-based Space Travel a Reality -A Galaxy Insight
April 7, 2008 – 10:54 amPlasma-based propulsion system that could improve fuel efficiency and get a manned mission to Mars in 39 days.Like a scene on the spaceship Discovery in 2001 A Space Odyssey, this coming January Ad Astra will test the VX-200, a full-scale ground prototype of the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMIR). First conceived in 1979, the rocket is an attempt to improve on current space-propulsion technologies using hot plasma, heated by radio waves and controlled by a magnetic field.
If all this goes according to plan, Chang Diaz hopes to eventually build VASIMIRs that could travel to Mars and beyond.
For the U.S.to conduct a serious space-exploration program, Chang Diaz belives “we need to develop two things: power and propulsion. Power in space is still severely limited. Mainly, we use solar power. This is fine as long as we stay near the sun, but the issue remains that for Mars and beyond, we will need to develop nuclear electric power. If we don’t, we might as well quit. We’re not going to get anywhere without it.”
Propulsion, Diaz calims is the missing link. We have been going into space in venerable rockets–the technology has changed little, and will not be sufficient for us to go to Mars and to go beyond Mars.
Accoding to Chang, “trips to Mars are prohibitively long and would expose the travelers to very high levels of radiation. I came to realize after my [NASA] flights that space is a tough place to be. If you’re going to spend months and months drifting from one planet to another, then, like [former astronaut] John Young says, you’re going to spend half the time looking out the window to the place that you came from, and the other half looking out the window to the place that you’re going. They’re both going to be little points of light, and you’re going to discover what loneliness is all about. I think that pretty much sums it up: space is a vast void, and you’re really going to have to travel fast if you’re going to have any chance of surviving. I also would not want to send people to Mars on a fragile and power-limited ship. If you send people that far, you have to give them a fighting chance to survive, and the only way you can do that is if you have ample supplies of power. Power is life in space.
About the near furture of space exploration, he believes that “lots of people are going to be moving into space. I think we will be populating the moon, building enclaves of research and even money-making ventures there. Just last month, Ad Astra signed an agreement with Excalibur Exploration Ltd., a British company, to mine asteroids [when the time is right]. I believe there will be a huge demand for resources, particularly water, from asteroids and comets, because taking water from the earth is going to be very expensive. We’re probably going to supply the moon and the habitat on the moon with water from comets.”