From: "nwaivio" <n.waivio@attbi.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.plasma
References: <b46gq0$cema$1@saturn.cs.uml.edu>
Subject: Re: PLASMA ROCKET ?
Organization: AT&T Broadband


I've seen many people talk about a plasma rocket to go to mars. These were
all just
concepts though. When I went to the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference I saw a
lot
of ideas how to do this. Some people thought to power them with Nuclear
Fission
like the nuclear power plants that power some cities. Other people thought
that they
could power theirs with Nuclear Fusion and the rocket thrust would be a
byproduct
of the fusion reactor. Others plan smaller engines that would only power
small
satellites and they could run on solar power or small Nuclear Thermal
reactors. But
for people to go to mars quickly they would need a very powerful engine of
many
megawatts. They need to transfer a lot of power to the plasma very rapidly
and the
whole engine needs to be light weight. They would need very strong magnetic
fields
and powerful antenna systems that could handle the power. Somewhat like the
C-MOD
RF systems posted in this group. Believe it or not I believe that getting
there fast is
not even the hard part of going to mars, its the rocket that would take off
from mars
and fly you back to your spaceship. A very hard thing to do on earth with
thousands
of engineers and technicians, on mars there would only be a handful of
people. In my
mind a better thing than sending people to mars would be for them to send
digital IMAX
cameras to every part of the solar system and explore with robots then send
the film
back for everyone on earth to enjoy. The plasma rocket field is wide open so
start
dreaming. Perhaps in the future if you ask I will share my dreams here. And
other
people please share yours.
Nathan Waivio