Plasma Rocket Successful Full Power Test 169
Matt_dk writes "VASIMR is a new high-power plasma-based space propulsion technology, initially studied by NASA and now being developed privately by Ad Astra. A VASIMR engine could maneuver payloads in space far more efficiently and with much less propellant than today's chemical rockets. Ultimately, VASIMR engines could also greatly shorten robotic and human transit times for missions to Mars and beyond."
Plasma Rockets Suck. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Plasma Rockets Suck. (Score:5, Funny)
Plasmas have deeper blacks, to really show that cosmos better.
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Yes but LCD suffers from more interference and dithering. We do want our force fields to interfere with space, yes? At least the nasty pointy bits.
Re:Plasma Rockets Suck. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Plasma Rockets Suck. (Score:5, Funny)
Mine's coloured in alternating stripes of Happy and D#. How about yours?
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Mine tastes like blue and sounds like the smell of rose petals...
Although, in honesty, unless I take very large doses (greater than 400 micrograms), I find the only synaesthesia I get is seeing sounds. I love "watching" Halcyon and On and On towards the end of a good trip... There's some really nice wavy bits there and the colours in the vocal sounds are quite incredible.
With increased dosage, I've experienced almost every other kind of synaesthesia, but I'm not sure I've seen "happy" (although I may have
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Then you are blessed.
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I'm still waiting for OLED rockets.
The interesting part (to me anyway) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The interesting part (to me anyway) (Score:5, Informative)
The Argon is not an energy source, it is merely propellant. Argon is chosen due to ionization potential. There is no splitting of argon (that consumes energy rather than producing it)
Power would have to be carted up separately, and in the case of a plasma drive it would presumably be nuclear.
Re:The interesting part (to me anyway) (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought it seemed fairly straightforward.
1. the hotter the flame, the more thrust you have and the more efficient the thrust. Your limit is when it's hot enough to melt the rocket's nozzle.
2. Since it's a plasma, you can control it with a magnetic field, to the point that its heat won't affect the rocket's nozzle.
More efficient=less fuel needed. In addition to keeping the heat away from the metal, being able to control it with a magnetic field means you don't have to have a moveable nozzle to steer the thing, making it possibly simpler than traditional designs.
Re:The interesting part (to me anyway) (Score:5, Informative)
There are only two things that matter in determining how much delta V you can get from a given rocket, Exhaust velocity and Propellant mass fraction.
The exhaust velocity is the mean velocity of the exhaust.
The propellant mass fraction is the fraction of vehicle launch mass that is propellant that will be slung out the back.
Now, in a conventional rocket, the propellants are typically accelerated by a simple thermodynamic gas generator (turbopumps and a chamber to burn the propellants to create high pressure hot gas) followed by a nozzle to convert the pressure and temperature into velocity. There are inherent limits in this process, not least that the heat source and reaction mass flow are inexorably coupled.
VASIMIR is essentially an ion drive variant which separates the reaction mass from the power source, and which allows the specific impulse to be varied (the number of NewtonSeconds of thrust per kg of fuel), this is useful as it allows for high thrust burns at relatively low specific impulse and low thrust burns at much better fuel economy to be mixed at will with the same motor.
The electrical power generator is an interesting problem, as most thermal generators on that scale would seem to need a vast amount of radiator to dump the waste heat from the condensers or equivalent. I suppose you could dump some of it into the fuel before it hits the injector, but that is going to be limited. Most likely the plan is to charge batteries with solar power, then discharge them rapidly to give a series of short burns.
I could see some sort of high temperature nuclear plant being flown, but as radiated power rises as the 4th power of absolute temperature, the radiators would have to run really hot to get good overall specific impulse from the complete propulsion assembly (Which means a relatively poor thermodynamic efficiency for the overall electrical plant), this might be a reasonable tradeoff.
Of course the political problems with launching a small reactor would be 'interesting'.
HTH.
Regards, Dan.
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Political problems, bah! The Chinese will do this first, launching a nuclear version that is. They will simply do it and dare the world to do anything about it! Domestic protest, if it occurs in China, will simply be harvested and skinned for their collagen so western women can have skin with the 'high pro glow'. Foreign protest can simply be dealt with by secretly threatening the protester hosting nations with trade repercussions against their bloodsucking co-conspirator industrialists. Look what happens when Canadians protest! See how fast they get absolutely hosed with pepper spray if they dare to breath a word of complaint against Chinese actions...or corporate monopolist actions as well.
Actually I say more power to the Chinese. They have the will to be winners in the world survival game. We in the west have lost our will, and survival will go to those able to achieve the triumph of the will, as then they will prove themselves fit to rule. We have proved ourselves unfit as we are weak and internally conflicted, lacking the guts to survive.
You remind me of D S Savage
http://antichomsky.blogspot.com/2004/07/orwell-vs-proto-chomskyites.html [blogspot.com]
he said
The pacifists' "championing" of Hitler referred to by Orwell is simply a recognition by us that Hitler and Germany contain a real historical dynamic, whereas we do not. Whereas the rest of the nation is content with calling down obloquy on Hitler's head, we regard this as superficial. Hitler requires, not condemnation, but understanding. This does not mean that we like, or defend him. Persoanlly, I do n
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This isn't a flame per se. The plasma isn't burning, it's being heated by an external energy source (the radio waves referenced above) and the resultant expansion drives it out the nozzle at very high velocities. Where this system is efficient is in its use of propellant. If you are using a rocket for transportation, you have to carry and then output some type of reaction mass. At higher exit velocities you need less mass to achieve the same increase in speed. However, the device to create the radio heati
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it's not really the heat, but the velocity. you can have cold-as-ice propellant if you can throw it away from you fast enough.
of course, with chemical rockets, there is usually a relationship between heat and velocity, but that's not necessarily true for plasma engines.
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As the AC mentioned, Argon is the propellant and not the fuel.
I have no idea what that even means, or is even supposed to mean. I quote it only to highlight that the source of your skepticism seems based entirely on a gross misunderstanding of the technology involved.
All rockets work by ejecting mass at high velocities. Take Argon, strip the electrons from it (ionize) and then accelerate it through a electric field potential. The advantage here is you
Physics doesn't work like you seem to think (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not the person to whom you were responding but I suspect the misunderstanding is on your end, not his. The meaning of the phrase is quite clear; in a system with sustained thrust the fuel (and reaction mass) used in a later portion of the trip has to be accelerated (along with the rest of the ship) for the whole proceeding portion of the trip. This means that, early in a long trip, the majority of the fuel/reaction mass you use accelerating the remainder, and only a small fraction is accelerating the payload. That's why large rocket use stages.
The "reasons" may be obvious to you, but they aren't valid. The actual relationship between final speed (from a standing start in some reference frame) and the exhaust velocity has as a factor the natural log of the starting mass over the payload mass. So (to use your made up numbers) if you started with a ship that was 90% hydrazine (by mass) your final velocity would be 1000*ln(100/10) mph or about 2300 mph, over twice your exhaust velocity. If the ship was 99% fuel, the final velocity would be 4600 mph, and so on.
--MarkusQ
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Ion, plasma, arc-jet, and the like are all about taking a small reaction mass (aka propellant) and ejecting it out the back at the highest speed possible. F=ma dictates that you can achieve a large force by tossing a large mass at a relatively low acceleration, or by tossing a sm
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Keep in mind that unless you are doing something like a Bussard ram scoop that is collecting material enroute, the only thing you have to be able toss out the back of your vehicle is reaction mass you have brought with you.
So your top "speed" is limited to exhaust velocity. All of these more exotic propellant systems are about increasing the efficiency of throwing the mass to increase the velocity of the vehicle.
The problem with these propulsion systems is that none of them are strong enough to be able to
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"The mass of the panels themselves quickly start to become a major issue as you scale up the thrust to make them useful,"
Thin film cells. They havent been flown in space yet apart from FTSCE/MISSE-5 tests, but you can get pretty good power to weight ratios with them, IIRC around 2KW/kg has been achievable.
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Er, scratch that. Mars Phoenix flew with ATK UltraFlex array, with Boeing Spectrolab cells
http://www.pv-tech.org/chip_shots/_a/no_juice_no_glory_inside_the_solar_arrays_powering_the_phoenix_mars_lander/ [pv-tech.org]
105W/Kg
Similar array is scheduled to fly on ST8
http://nmp.nasa.gov/st8/ [nasa.gov]
Shooting for 175W/Kg
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Actually, the relevant thing here is the conservation of momentum. Assuming that you are ejecting mass straight back - a reasonable assumption, since that's the most efficient way - vm=VM, V=vm/M, where V=velocity (actually delta-v) of rocket, M the mass of same, and v and m the same f
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If your hydrazine rocket can expel mass at, say, 1000 mph (making numbers up here) then the top speed of your rocket is 1000mph for reasons I hope are obvious. But ion engines can potentially eject mass at much higher speeds.
Actually, that turns out not to be the case. Neglecting outside forces, if two unequal masses are pushed apart, Newton's Third Law requires the smaller mass to move at a higher residual velocity. That's why most of a spacecraft's mass is fuel--to take advantage of that inequality.
top speed is HUH?! (Score:2)
If your hydrazine rocket can expel mass at, say, 1000 mph (making numbers up here) then the top speed of your rocket is 1000mph for reasons I hope are obvious
Not true. If I'm expelling gas at ANY speed, then I'm generating thrust. Thrust means acceleration. If I can keep the acceleration going indefinitely then I can accelerate to any speed (short of c).
Re:top speed is HUH?! (Score:5, Informative)
top speed = v * ln(M/m) + v0
where:
v = exhaust gas speed
M = starting mass of rocket + fuel
m = ending/empty mass of rocket
v0 = initial velocity
so the exhaust gas might be only 1000mph but you can go pretty much up to the speed of light if you can get ending mass to 0...
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But you run out of mass more quickly if you throw it away more slowly. You can't keep accelerating indefinitely as eventually you run out of mass to throw away (or having to decide if you want to throw out something in the "payload" instead).
The top speed isn't quite limited to the velocity of the exhaust as the
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OK, you want me to answer this question? Sounds like a classical college physics problem.
You already gave away the answer here, but hidden in the variables.
F = m * v^2
v = sqrt(F/m) = sqrt (100/0.1)
QED, v = ~ 32 m/s
That, BTW, is the minimum exhaust velocity, treating the exhaust as purely linear stream and not accounting for variables like gaseous expansion or other factors. Any more questions? Not college but high school physics here BTW. Calculating the final velocity of the spacecraft does require a b
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The reason why this is a good thing is over time a solar cell can provide a lot of energy per unit weight. Using systems like this you can dramatically alter the orbit of satellites without taking ridiculous amounts of fuel into orbit. Or for long range probes you can use nuclear energy and high velocity react
Constant Boost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Constant Boost? (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, we could always do that, in practise I don't think we'll ever do that. Getting anywhere really fast burns a ton of extra energy, plasma drive or not. Most of the really long-distance missions haven't accelerated to that speed, they've done a slingshot trip around jupiter or something like that. Even on a Mars mission we're really just waiting for Mars to be in the right position to leap orbit and minimize the rocket use, not plotting a course or going from full impulse to full stop in seconds like you see on Star Trek. It would still cut a lot of costs but the cheapest route is still the slow one.
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You can't go full impulse to full stop in seconds without inertial damping anyway. Duh.
{/STAR TREK FANBOY}
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You're assuming (as most likely the grandparent did) that constant boost means HIGH constant boost (like 1 G).
We've launched a few ion engine powered ships that employ more or less constant boost. The acceleration is very small, but it adds up over time.
Getting somewhere really fast takes extra propellant, but you have to burn a certain amount to get there at all. Constant boost just means you burn it slowly, as you go, rather than burning it all in a few seconds or minutes and then coasting the rest of t
Re:Constant Boost? (Score:5, Informative)
Typically these rockets are more efficient than their chemical cousins. For a given reactant mass, rockets will give you more thrust (can't get into orbit with anything but rockets at this point) but the plasma and ion engines are more efficient, low-thrust but higher change in velocity (delta-v.)
As it was described, a mars mission using an ion engine would not leave the space station with a dramatic blast of flame. The captain would say "turn the engine on," go, get coffee, watch a movie, look out the window and still be able to wave back to people at the station. Tune back in three weeks later and he'll be moving at a clip that would make chemical rockets weep in jealousy.
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Sounds like the smart move would be to combine the systems to get the best of both worlds (some sort of chemical/plasma/ion transmission system)
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Regarding your sig:
'Can someone explain to me why the () go inside the period, but the "" go outside the period?'
They don't. Correct (but old-fashioned) English usage has them both have the . inside the () or "". Modern usage, especially among science type, is to have the . outside any parenthesis, to keep the base sentence internally consistent (and other logical reasons).
Your perception stems from the way science types use () more often than "", and older English teachers use "" more often than ().
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Regarding your sig:
'Can someone explain to me why the () go inside the period, but the "" go outside the period?'
you just did it there. Why is the ? inside the quotes? Because it's part of my question? Should'nt it then be
you asked 'Can someone explain to me why the () go inside the period, but the "" go outside the period?'.
See what I mean? I'm not trying to be trite, I am honestly confused. If I quote the word time and say I need more "time", why is that incorrect?
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What did you mean when you said 'that idea is poison'?
In the preceding sentence, the ? is outside the '' because the question belongs to the speakers words, not to the quote he is using.
In all honesty, the real reason in this case was I was too lazy to type out the <blockquote> </blockquote> tags, instead I just used the ' '.
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Wrong. Old fashioned English usage is to place only those elements in the quotes which were actually quoted. Same goes for parentheses. See my quote of your statement above. Modern usage came from typography, and involves placing punctuation in
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I was not aware of the typographical link. Given that movable type has been around in Europe since at least the 15th century, I don't think I was wrong to call that standard 'old-fashioned'.
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If it launched from a station in orbit, it will need to accelerate from 5mps to 7mps to break orbit. Does this slow acceleration imply that VASIMR power ships will have to circle the earth a few times to build up speed?
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Yeah. Check out this conceptual video [youtube.com] they put up for a possible Mars mission with 3 VASIMR engines.
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Sounds like a small-ish booster stage to break orbit, and keep going with the VASIMR would be a useful idea, so far as absolute time goes. I doubt it would be worth the extra effort, though.
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Or for that matte
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They are more efficient on paper, but in real world engineering, not so much.
But much of the theoretical performance gain is eaten up by the need to provide a source of power - and for any significant payloa
The Numbers (Score:5, Informative)
The Wikipedia entry says it can be tuned for an Isp of 3,000k seconds to 30,000k seconds.
A liquid fueled chemical rocket has an Isp of about 500 seconds. A really good fission thermal rocket, maybe 1000 seconds. The Deep Space 1 ion rocket could do 3.1k seconds.
How to turn this into usable numbers:
Find the exhaust velocity. Vex. Multiply the Isp by "g". So, your chemical rocket has an exhaust velocity of about 5 kps, and your VASIMIR 30 kps.
The figure out the velocity change you want. Vd.
Then:
M(o)/(M(o)+M(f)) = e^(Vd/Vex)
M(o) = Mass of spaceship without reaction mass
M(f) = Mass of reaction mass
e = natural log number, about 2.178
A Hohmann orbit trip to Mars orbit from Earth orbit without need for aerobreaking of the like might require 20 kps. Hohmann orbit to Mercury, 40 kps.
Drawback to ion drives and VASIMIR is a really, really low thrust. You might be better off with lower efficiency but higher thrust or you'll lose the fuel (uh, reaction mass) savings in consumables, and/or risks to your crew from flares.
Re:The Numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Your VASIMR ISP figures are out by 1000. It's 3000 to 30000 seconds, or 3 to 30 k seconds, NOT 3000 to 30000 k seconds.
Generally, if you're going a decent distance, you SAVE time with a high ISP engine, even if it is low thrust. "Decent distance" depends on the specifics, but for most of these engines Mars is far enough away, the moon, probably not.
D'oh! (Score:2)
See what happens when you post with a low-grade fever?
I managed to post the Isp without the extraneous "k"s down the page a bit.
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M(o) = Mass of spaceship without reaction mass
M(f) = Mass of reaction mass
e = natural log number, about 2.178
Are you sure you got the mass ratio the right way up?
M(o)/(M(o)+M(f)) is fractional, but e^(Vd/Vex) is greater than one for positive Vd, Vex, so this can't work.
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Certainly. You'd probably want to use one of these things at pretty much constant boost.
Now, that doesn't mean 1 G.
Fusion adaptation? (Score:2)
The VASIMR engine works with plasma, a very hot gas at temperatures close to the interior of the Sun. Plasmas are electrically charged fluids that can be heated to extreme temperatures by radio waves and controlled and guided by strong magnetic fields. The magnetic field also insulates any nearby structure; so temperatures well beyond the melting point of materials can be achieved and the resulting plasma can be harnessed to produce propulsion.
Anyone know if this could be used in fusion reactor containment?
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However, in the long term, this could be key to getting workable fusion reactors. If the technology for a plasma engine becomes widespread with several independent firms working on it, it's entirely possible that a big breakthrough for fusion reactors will come from
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Even indirect help. Those higher efficiency containment fields would end up making fusion research cheaper to perform, correct?
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Yup, [wikipedia.org] as planned for ITER [wikipedia.org].
Thanks, Andrei [wikipedia.org]
Now we just need a good hull... (Score:3, Funny)
Preferbly General Products #2 with a statis field.
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a statis field.
While I applaud finding a use for the whole lot of them, I'm not sure just what kind of protection you'd get from strapping a bunch of Big Government democrats and republicans to your hull... oh wait, you meant stasis not statist ;)
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"I'm not sure just what kind of protection you'd get from strapping a bunch of Big Government democrats and republicans to your hull..."
Well, they aren't that great at meteor or radiation protection, but they are cheap, there's a lot of them, and no one will really miss them.
And the drumming of their feet on the hull as they suffocate is very relaxing.
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I need to know... (Score:2, Funny)
...whether this technology is more like Windows or Linux before I can form an opinion.
Unless there's an RIAA angle, of course.
But where does the energy come from? (Score:2, Informative)
This is all fine with regards to the rocket equation, but that's just about conservation of momentum. You still have to provide it with energy, and 2*H2+O2 -> 2*H2O happens to be as good as you can get in terms of energy/mass ratio. As I see it, this plasma rocket is not really useful without a nuclear power source of some kind.
Re:But where does the energy come from? (Score:4, Informative)
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ALL of the acceleration energy comes from heating (via the radio waves) and accelerating (via the magnets). It takes a considerable amount of energy. Slightly more than you get in the kinetic energy of your spacecraft, actually.
Re:But where does the energy come from? (Score:4, Informative)
I think they've already solved that one.
SNAP [wikipedia.org]
RTG [wikipedia.org]
Nuclear Reactors for Space [world-nuclear.org]
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Only nuclear reactors. RTGs deliver too little power. A Polywell would be nice if it woks.
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Is a fine fusion reactor only 9.3e7 miles away (Score:2)
As I see it, this plasma rocket is not really useful without a nuclear power source of some kind.
There's a fine, time-proven, continuous fusion reactor about 93 megamiles away from Earth, complete with a power beam system sending plenty of power out this way. They call it "the sun".
At this distance it provides over a kilowatt per square yard of receiver surface area. In orbit (or at feather-light acceleration) the collection structures can be very low mass. So even something with pretty low efficiency an
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As I see it, this plasma rocket is not really useful without a nuclear power source of some kind.
Solar would work quite well, especially on a trip to the inner solar system (mercury / venus)
I think it would be wiser to head inbound for manned missions... easier to keep warm and vastly higher solar output levels.
Specific Impulse? (Score:2)
The article didn't mention is, so I'll ask the crowd: does anyone know what the specific impulse [wikipedia.org] of this device would be when completed?
Wiki says 3k to 30k seconds (Score:4, Insightful)
The same incorporates "variable specific impulse" so you have to use a range.
3,000 seconds is comparable to a ion motor.
30,000 seconds is better than the predicted Isp of the Orion nuke-bomb drive.
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Efficiency is an area where ion rockets excel, but power is where chemical rockets excel. The first stage of the Saturn V actually burned propellent at a rate of about 190,000 MW, which is equivalent to nearly 200 commercial nuclear power plants. However, converting all that power to electricity so it can be effectively used in an ion thruster would be horribly impractical.
Of course, but since the VASIMR is so much more efficient, you would only need a fraction of that power to have a really, really fast space-only drive.
If a 190 GW-rated VASIMR engine could be built and the power plant for it ( antimatter? dilithium crystals? ) was available, then I think .999c would seem like first gear. :-P
Finally repulsor propulsion! (Score:2)
The risk (Score:1)
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Mind you, much like ion drives, it can only be used in a vacuum, making it totally useless for load-lifting object *into* space and really only useful for moving them around while up there. Ion drives have classically been used as station keeping drives on space stations and
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Wamprats (Score:4, Funny)
Are there useful numbers on this? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, this is a classic plasma rocket - ionize an inert gas (here argon) and push it out with an electric field (not done in this test). So what are the numbers? How much argon are they using per unit thrust? How much electric power does this take. Is 200KW the input, or the output?
You still have to carry reaction mass; that's the argon. So you can't just keep boosting as long as you have power.
It's not a bad idea, but it's not clear how good the implementation is.
Re:Are there useful numbers on this? (Score:5, Informative)
it's a paper that the researchers published last year describing what they had done with the previous version of the engine and what they planned on doing with this version
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Why is this funny? Informative I would think.
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Old news... (Score:2, Interesting)
VASIMR is a new high-power plasma-based space propulsion technology
Yeah, if by new, you mean 30 years old [wikipedia.org]...
rob (Score:2, Funny)
Arrrrrgon? (Score:4, Funny)
Q: What's a pirate's favorite rocket propellant?
A: Arrrrgon!
Q: What's a pirate's favorite sock pattern?
A: Arrrrgyle!
Q: What's a pirate's favorite rating system?
A: Arrrrbitron!
Q: What's a pirate's favorite Dudley Moore movie?
A: Surprisingly, it's 'Micki and Maude'
Lowest possible Orbit? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, does anyone know what the lowest possible orbit is one can use that thing from?
One reason ion engines cannot be used from ground to orbit is that they need a vacuum to operate, the other one is that the trust is too low to get into orbit.
With Vasimir however one can get higher trust than with typical ion engines. Could it be possible that suborbital trajectories might be enough?
To get a usable orbit one needs an engine which raises the perigee from the ground to a point outside the atmosphere (I even tried this in Orbiter once), could it do that too?
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While I don't have an answer to my question, let me mention that I somehow had the dream of ion engines being the best thing since sliced bread since they have such a high exhaust velocity (v_e).
Since v_e affects the delta v linearly as opposed to logarithmically like the mass fraction this is just such a nice knob to play with.
Unfortunately the power plant weight of the ion engine is something we are stuck with forever, so there is no nice mass ratio involved with ion engines.
The other thing is that accord
What about the sharks? (Score:3, Funny)
This isn't going to become a useful technology, like lasers, until you can mount it on a shark!
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Funny how you guys have forgotten the work and effort which goes into this or how the saying goes,
"Per aspera ad astra"
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The "Ad Astra" part meaning "to the stars", so it's not all that coincidental.