VERY VERY VERY COOL!

This would be huge if true!

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From the Vancouver Sun http://nexus404.com/Blog/2009/10/20/round-trip-to-mars-39-days-or-less-nasa-ion-propulsion-rocket-engine-sends-you-to-mars-and-back-in-over-a-month-special-fees-may-apply/

A new NASA rocket engine, designed partly in Canada, raises the revolutionary possibility that a manned trip to Mars could take less than three months instead of two years.

Ion propulsion, discussed since the original Star Trek TV series, is now close to the point where it could be tested on a flight to the moon, says Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

It would take about 39 days to reach Mars, compared to six months by conventional rocket power.

Because Mars and Earth only pass close together every two years, space experts have always assumed a crew would have to travel one way, wait a year, then fly back the next time the planets were close together - raising huge problems for food, air and water storage.

But ion drive could make a return trip possible during a single close approach of Earth and Mars.

“We built an ion propulsion engine down in Houston,” said Chris Hadfield, a veteran Canadian astronaut.

“A whole bunch of countries (were involved), but Canada has one of the main pieces of hardware. And this engine can get us to Mars in 39 days.

“And this just happened in the last couple of weeks.”

Nautel Ltd. of Halifax builds power generators for the VASIMR engine, designed by the Ad Astra Rocket Co. of Houston.

“This engine is in fact going to be tested on the International Space Station, launched about 2013,” Hadfield said at a space symposium held recently by the Royal Society of Canada, at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

“It turns electrical power into thrust so that we can use solar energy” to power a spaceship, he said.

The engine would accelerate a spaceship non-stop until it's halfway to Mars, producing a tiny stream of argon gas that it fires out the rear of the spacecraft. Then it turns the engine around and decelerates non-stop until reaching Mars.

Hadfield told high school and university students in the audience: “Hopefully by the time you guys are ready, we'll be taking people to Mars and back.”

“Of course, there are lots of assumptions going into 39 days,” he said later in an interview. “It probably needs to be tested on the moon. You need to run it in a vacuum for 39 days. You can't do that on Earth.”

There are also questions of how big the spaceship would be that influence engine size.

“You accelerate halfway, decelerate halfway,” he said.

There are also plans to use the ion engine on the space station to counteract the slight drag from wisps of Earth's atmosphere. This drag makes the station slow down slightly (creating tiny amounts of gravity) and forces crews to burn fuel regularly to boost their orbit.

Ad Astra says its first tests were successful, and it is now working with Nautel on a more powerful engine.

Ottawa Citizen

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Talk about a giant leap for mankind. This would cut off considerable time for any flight outside of the moon.

WTF??? That doesn't make any sense... They're converting energy into matter?

Wow, who would have thought that Star Trek would be that influential?

Does that mean that the space shuttle model will change? Can't wait to see that!

coolness

God I love Canada.

This isn't the first time I've heard of the VASIMR engine. The engines themselves are a lot heavier per pound of thrust than conventional rockets, but use reaction mass much more efficiently. So they're no good for short trips like surface to orbit, but great once you're in freefall. Which is why we should take a serious look at a space elevator.

You can find more details on them here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/05/vasimr_200kw_success/

They use electrical power to superheat argon gas into a plasma, generating a huge amount of thrust for very little reaction mass.

They're not converting energy into matter, they're just converting solar energy into newtons in a process which uses very little matter.

Oh... Thanks, that clears it up.

Correct. The advantage of this system is that you are using a lot more energy (which can be produced via solar, nuclear, or any other type of reaction) instead of chemicals. The advantage is that your propulsion system takes a lot less weight for what it outputs.

For example, this new ion engine can get to mars in 39 days whereas traditional chemical rockets (which can't accelerate after takeoff) take 90 days or so.

coolbeans