NASA: VASIMR to ISS

[Evildead666]

Wow. again.

Star Trek really has done a lot for us in the imagination stakes...
I'd love to see what the shields look like in action..

[Dr Mordrid]

It's pronounced vaz-i-meer (short i)

An offshoot of the shield is M2P2 - a solar sail made up entirely of a plasma bubble created using said magnetic field but hyper-inflated by injecting even more plasma and yes, the numbers work out for making one that big using far less power than you'd think. Bottom line is it has dual use possibilities. Some say the M2P2 bubble could be made several kilometers across given a small reactor powering it.

Animated simulation of M2P2 here....

Vacuum chamber test here....

Both *.avi's playable in WMP

M2P2 magetic bubble solar sail

[Evildead666]

Cheers Dr

The second vid is pretty hard to make out, but the first one was very useful.
It looks like it would be possible to swing those fields into just about any position, but at the moment there are only 3, so limited.

edit : looks like the field generator on the left, with the plasma source on the right, and a test object in the centre ?

[Dr Mordrid]

Pretty much it, but that layout is optimized for solar sailing. For a shield it would be more like a web around the surface of the ship. Of course they're only at the beginning of optimizing the physical layouts. The techs are pretty much the same, it's just shaping the field that changes how it could be used.

[Nowhere]

Hm, just realised we have early versions of almost all basic systems - except warp drive :/

(and such convenient details as transporter, replicator and holodeck...)

[Dr Mordrid]

And they're already working on quantum teleportation - they've already transported small clouds of argon gas.

[rylan]

Need to bring Tesla back... he had some of that stuff figured out.

[Dr Mordrid]

Flight Global has posted an article confirming what NASA's Griffin said at Oshkosh;

Link....

NASA to test plasma engine on space station

By Rob Coppinger

NASA expects to sign an agreement to test a new propulsion system on the International Space Station, according to the US space agency's administrator Michael Griffin.

At the AirVenture show in Oshkosh on 29 July, Griffin was asked about the status of NASA's advanced space propulsion research. His reply referred to the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (Vasimir).

The Vasimir involves the injection of a gas such as hydrogen into an engine that turns it into a plasma. That plasma is then energised further using radio signals as it flows through the engine, a process controlled by electromagnetic waves from superconducting magnets. Accelerated and heated through this process the plasma is focused and directed as exhaust by a magnetic nozzle. Vasimir is many times more efficient than conventional chemical rockets and far less fuel is needed.

Griffin says that the next step for the Vasimir is to operate it in space and that "we are at the end stages of agreeing a co-operative agreement for NASA to test the Vasimir engine on station".

The Vasimir engine taken to the ISS would be a scale-model test engine. Griffin says he does not know whether that scale-model engine would be launched by a Space Shuttle and would not give a timescale for Vasimir's possible deployment to the ISS.

The agency signed an agreement in 2006 to co-operate on Vasimir with the Texas based-Ad Astra Rocket corporation. Vasimir was originally conceived by Ad Astra Rocket chief executive and former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz.