Franklin Chang Diaz, NovaScience Now, 2/2

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Science & Technology

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• 2

[wilbursalazar]

Thumbs up if you're related to him!!!!

[cloakster]

Bob Zubrin, a rocket scientist, is the one who called VASIMR out as a hoax.

[DougWardBlammo]

Good ole You Tube.A bunch of American experts, who aren't even capable of voting, telling a rocket scientist he's on the wrong track.

[cloakster]

Btw, 200 megawatts comes from Chang-Diaz himself.

[cloakster]

Google "The VASIMR hoax".

[cloakster]

for some reason, long comments are not working. Censorship?

[cloakster]

test- YouTube seems to be having problems adding comments right now

[PsionNinja]

@cloakster starting at 3:20 it turns out he is a bit vague on how powerful a plasma rocket would have to be to get to mars in 39 days. I know that the 200kw design has a positive thrust of about 1lb (0.46kg). I would suppose you'd need more than that to accelerate and decelerate for that 39 day run to mars. But the question is exactly how much? where did you get the 200 megawatts numbers at?

[cloakster]

@PsionNinja You're under a false assumption. The 'test' VASIMR engine may be 200 kilowatts, but the one that could actually get us to Mars in 39 days would require 200 MEGAwatts.

They're NOT the same thing.

Again, the PROBLEM: VASIMR, while very fuel-efficient, doesn't generate much thrust. To scale up enough to provide enough thrust to get us to Mars FAST, VASIMR needs LOTS of electrical power.

But said LOTS of power requires LOTS of HEAVY nuke reactors. Which renders '39 days' impossible.

[PsionNinja]

@cloakster The current VASIMR peaks at 200KILOwatts and would be enough to get us to mars in 39 days. I seen it before where people mix up kilowatts and megawatts. Even then 200KW can be produced by a 268HP car engine hooked up to an electric generator. Though I don't know if they'd want a car engine in space. Better get to work on fusion.