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>> ^djsunkid: He suggests that if you accelerate towards mars at 9.8m/s^2 then you will get half way there in only 4 days...8 days to Mars! That's MAD! This video says 39 days. ALSO MAD! Very exciting stuff.



From back of the handing your numbers I worked out that the mars trip they are talking about only requires a constant acceleration of .035m/s², and a peak speed of about 60km/s.

As jwray suggested this is interplanetary (very cool), but not inter-steller, since access to power (solar being the only real option) would diminish as you travel, you would have to accelerate at something like 1M*g to get up to .25c by the time your solar power failed.

The questions are how small, in theory, can this thing be made, and how efficiently can it use the gas it uses to generate the plasma. After running those numbers I would be surprised if this tech, even it its most refined, could get a probe to another star in a human life time.

Looks like I have to wait for warp technology. Damn you Sci-Fi for unrealistic expectations!!!

go to
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In reply to this comment by djsunkid:
AAARAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!! LOAD MORE COMMENTS!?!??! WTF! DO NOT WANT!!!!!!!


I thought that I had read to the bottom of the thread and nobody had mentioned decelerating after the half-way point. Whose TERRIBLE idea was this "Load more comments"????? AARRRGH!


:ANGER:

Wow! I just found out about this whole "load more comments" thing and kind of went ballistic. I'm hate it so much. hate hate hate
http://www.videosift.com/video/Plasma-Rocket-Breakthrough?loadcomm=1#comment-926347

edit: well crap.. I guess a bunch more people already told you this stuff so Still angry.

It is SO awesome to me that this news report comes out a week after I read John Varley's Red Thunder, so I know a few of these figures....

>> ^westy:
surly the faster you go the more you have to decelerate so say u got to mars in 30 days as aposed to 1 year you would have to spend ages going around its gravity feailds before u lost enough speed to safely enter the atmosphere. ethor that or you are going to have to waste a tun of fuel to brake.

So in the novel the idea was that we don't use up all our fuel any more. He suggests that if you accelerate towards mars at 9.8m/s^2 then you will get half way there in only 4 days. If you accelerate at 1g for say four days and you end up travelling at around 3 million meters PER SECOND or 12 million km/h. That's fast enough to have relativistic effects. No wonder it only takes 4 days to get half way to Mars. At that point we will have travelled 58 million kilometres.

Now simply turn around, and fire your rocket in the other direction for the second half of the trip and decelerate at 9.8m/s^2 for four days. In 8 days you can travel 116 million kilometres. Wolfram Alpha says Mars is only 105 million kilometres away. Whut whut!

8 days to Mars! That's MAD! This video says 39 days. ALSO MAD! Very exciting stuff.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The Wikipedia article on aerobraking I linked to mentions doing multiple passes for effective braking. So the the first pass is enough to put you into an elliptical orbit, and then subsequent passess can slowly pull you closer to the planet body. I'm sure there are upper speed limitations with this though.

I just watched 2010 a couple of days ago. Those crazy Soviets used giant inflatable metallic, heat-absorbing bags when aerobreaking around Jupiter.

>> ^jwray:
Aerobraking only works if you're not going vastly faster than the escape velocity of the planet that you're approaching. Or else you'll just get one pass through the upper atmosphere, not slow down enough, and keep going never to return. Mars' surface escape velocity is 5km/s, and mars is 35 million miles from earth on closest approach. Clearly you need some sort of retro rockets if you expect to get there in under a month. Mars has less than 1/100 of the atmospheric pressure of earth, and earth's atmosphere isn't enough to stop random asteroids from hitting it at 20km/sec

Go go plasma rocket power!

Ion rockets (they aren't really rockets, they are called ion thrusters) as they stand do not generate that much thrust. This is vastly different than an ion drive. The only function the magnetic field has in this drive is to focus what is a very traditional "jet stream" of superheated plasma out the tail. A ion drive uses the magnetic field to "push" off ions...very different concepts. The ion drive is great because the amount of fuel is needs is so minute...but thrust is also fairly pitiful.

(upon further reading, the best ion drive is about x2 less powerful than this particular drive. This particular drive is running at 59% efficiency. They have plans for a slightly larger rocket that is about 80% or so efficiency, which brings them up to about what a normal rocket efficiency is.)

>> ^LooiXIV:
Or snu snu with giant amazon women!
>> ^mentality:
Great. Now all we need to do is invent cryosleep and we'll be well on our way to making love with giant blue alien babes.



"And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars?" - Captain Zapp Brannigan

Or snu snu with giant amazon women!
>> ^mentality:
Great. Now all we need to do is invent cryosleep and we'll be well on our way to making love with giant blue alien babes.

Wow, we do need some balance after all the awesome Plasma Rocket videos; just gotta show that there's equally some dumb folks out there.

One step forward, two steps back.

Your video, Plasma Rocket, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Initial interest brought to you by http://www.videosift.com/video/Plasma-Rocket-Breakthrough

That one is more newsy, this one has more tidbits of how it works.

>> ^blutruth:
>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^blutruth:
doublepost.

?

Sorry, I should've been more clear. I accidentally commented twice. Couldn't find a way to delete it, so just edited it. Next time, I shall say: [edit] doublepost.


Oh! LOL no problemo!

Your video, Plasma Rocket Breakthrough, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.