NASA’s New Vasimr Plasma Engine Could Reach Mars in Less Than 6 Weeks

amazingastronomy.thespaceacademy.org

29 points·rmason··11 comments

This article is more spun than the thread in my shirt. Absolute repost spam about an otherwise interesting topic.

Well, NASA paid $10M this time. Unless they are burning money, they are onto something. I hope so.

I have over 600 hours logged on Kerbal Space Program and can confidentially say if this works it’s a real game changer.

Wikipedia says this Mars trip would require a 200MW power source.

That alone sounds way more impressive and difficult than any engine could be on its own.

It’s like making an electric golf cart break the sound barrier. Yeah you did something amazing but maybe that mini nuclear reactor you invented along the way is a bigger deal.

200 milliwatts doesn't sound like much.

Hooray

Lowercase m - milli. Uppercase M - mega.

I know :) OP edited their comment afterwards.

The smaller nuclear reactors used on submarines and aircraft carriers would be of the appropriate size, but they generate electricity using steam turbines. I don't think that would be workable in space. You'd need massive radiators to radiate away a lot of that heat to recondense the steam.

If you're generating that much heat, then you're probably better off using the nuclear reactor to directly heat the propellant.

Joe Scott has a new video up about Nuclear propulsion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5UU0GA5GAU

Vasimr was such a high-sci-fi dream... in like 2002. Still rooting for it but man, it's like an old happy memory to keep returning to.

A lot of progress recently apparently … they’ve gotten longer firings, smaller,and less input electricity over time. Apparently getting close to flight readiness. Kinda exciting the live in the future.

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