Scientist eyes 39-day voyage to Mars

AFP on Yahoo ^ | 2/26/10 | Jean-Louis Santini

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A journey from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days -- cutting current travel time nearly six times -- according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, ..

The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket -- to give its full name -- is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration.

...

Hopes are now pinned on firms like Chang-Diaz's Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company.

"In the early days... NASA support for the project was rather minimal because the agency did not emphasize advanced technologies as much as it's doing now," Chang-Diaz told AFP.

NASA was focused instead on the series of Apollo missions that delivered men to the moon for the first, and so far last, times.

"They were mesmerized by the Apollo days and lived in the Apollo era for 40 years, and they just forgot developing something new," he said.

Chang-Diaz, 60, hopes that "something" is a non-chemical rocket that eventually allow for a manned trip to Mars -- long the Holy Grail for Apollonians.

His rocket would use electricity to transform a fuel -- likely hydrogen, helium or deuterium -- into plasma gas that is heated to 19.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (11 million degrees Celsius). The plasma gas is then channelled into tailpipes using magnetic fields to propel the spacecraft.

That would send a shuttle hurtling toward the moon or Mars at ever faster speeds up to an estimated 35 miles (55 kilometers) per second until the engines are reversed.

[TomasUSMC]

Just use nukes as propulsion. Off the shelf. Get there fastest with the mostest