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Plasma rocket breaks endurance record

Falcon1Falcon1 Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
A new type of plasma rocket engine has been successfully tested in Costa Rica. The rocket ran for 4 hours which is a huge jump over the 2 minutes it managed during its first test in december. I find the comment in the article that it can produce a small amount of artifical gravity quite interesting. Mars here we come :p

[url]http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12064-plasma-rocket-breaks-endurance-record.html[/url]

Comments

  • Capt.MontoyaCapt.Montoya Ranger
    [quote] I find the comment in the article that it can produce a small amount of artifical gravity quite interesting. [/quote] Does it remain "interesting" if the explanation is that they produce "gravity" in the same way that a roller-coaster subjects you to more than 1 G? ;)

    Cool thing, actually. Chang-Diaz wrote an article on the VSIMR engine for Scientific American afew years ago, nice to know the prototype is getting better.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    Any propulsion can produce "artificial gravity." A car can produce "artificial gravity." :)

    The benefit of this method of propulsion is that, like the very-similar ion engine, it's a continued, sustained thrust throughout the trip, and so you get the "gravity" for the entire trip.
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    So can bureaucrats... or so they think.
  • FreejackFreejack Jake the Not-so-Wise
    [QUOTE=Biggles;161621]Any propulsion can produce "artificial gravity." A car can produce "artificial gravity." :)

    The benefit of this method of propulsion is that, like the very-similar ion engine, it's a continued, sustained thrust throughout the trip, and so you get the "gravity" for the entire trip.[/QUOTE]

    Actually, as humans venture out into space, this "gravity" produced by acceleration may turn out to be a great nusence, since it will basicly limit the maximum acceration of a vehicle with humans aboard to somewhere between 1 and 2 Gs over a sustained period (weeks/months). There may come a point where our propolsion systems have no problem sustain a much greater velocity than that, but our human bodies cannot.

    Jake
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    Mmm squishy.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    That's what inertial dampeners are for. ;)
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    And don't forget the "Jeffrey's tubes" or whatever they are called. :D

    I'm just waiting for the day they have to get outside the shuttle and push.

    It's quite sad actually to watch the shuttle program turn into another Mir. :(
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    That's not the worst of it. What's worse is the vast amount of knowledge that has been lost during the stalled two decades of space flight. For example:

    [url]http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/umbilical_transcription.html[/url]

    (That isn't the original article I read, but it'll do.) That article is making a big thing about NASA engineers "learning from the past," etc. But the big, unspoken thing in it is that there is a generation-long gap in their engineering staff, because staff with knowledge from the Apollo era (which, while old, is still valuable knowledge) were lost, and with them their knowledge, as they didn't have anyone to pass it on to. Now, when that knowledge is needed again, current-day engineers are reduced to either studying museum pieces or redesigning from scratch without knowing what was done before to see what worked and what didn't.
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    [URL="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070619/sc_afp/spacemarseurope_070619110956"]http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070619/sc_afp/spacemarseurope_070619110956[/URL]

    And now they are looking for the next "dirty dozen" to participate in a long-duration experiment, on Earth, to simulate the trip to Mars.

    Or for the conspiracy theorists out there, they are already planning the next fake landing, but this time on Mars. :D

    Heh, reminds me of the movie, Capricorn One...
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