Plasma Magnet Sails to get manned missions to Mars in 1 week

[ScienceRocks]

Plasma Magnet Sails to get manned missions to Mars in 1 week
brian wang | January 2, 2018

The plasma magnet sail engine is little more than 2 pairs of charged rotating coils and is therefore extremely simple and inexpensive. A fully powered plasma magnet sail using a small nuclear power source could accelerate at 0.5G and reach 400-700 km/sec (0.2% of lightspeed) in half a day.

(H/T Centauri Dreams)

* Carrying a 10 Kilowatt power source enables very cheap missions to the Gravitational lens with trips taking 5 years. Multiple gravitational lens missions are needed since you can only observe what is on the exact opposite side of the sun from the gravitational lens mission
* 10kW power supply could propel a 2500 kg craft with an acceleration of 0.5g, reaching 400-700 km/s in just half a day. Greason suggested that with this acceleration, the FOCAL mission for gravitational lens telescopes requiring many craft should be achievable.
* A stream of charged particles could be generated from Phobos or Demos to slow the Plasma magnet sail to Mars. If you were slowing a 100-ton manned spacecraft, then you would need to produce 100,000 tons of particles. There would need to be multi-megawatt plant on the moons of Mars. It is possible to scale up for manned missions and to stop the craft.
* Neptune has a large enough magnetosphere where a plasma magnet sail could stop by decelerating at 5Gs. It would be a 4-month mission to Neptune
* a 10 KW system could slow an interstellar spacecraft from 20% of lightspeed over 2 years. Interstellar missions could then explore the target solar system.

https://www.nextbigf...-in-1-week.html

wow, this would be awesome

 

[irosie91]

May I go? I am a little "fat"------not that which anyone would call OBESE----but I do have RESERVES----
stored in my <blush> thighs and buttocks In a space ship I could go at least two months on very
minimal nourishment. I am never PICKY about "accomodations" so long as there are no bugs or
creepy crawly things

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

Interesting but the first piece of space dust that hits kills the entire crew. Also there was something about 5 gs of deceleration that doesn't sound very comfortable.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Great for unmanned vehicles

 

[IsaacNewton]

Plasma Magnet Sails to get manned missions to Mars in 1 week
brian wang | January 2, 2018

The plasma magnet sail engine is little more than 2 pairs of charged rotating coils and is therefore extremely simple and inexpensive. A fully powered plasma magnet sail using a small nuclear power source could accelerate at 0.5G and reach 400-700 km/sec (0.2% of lightspeed) in half a day.

(H/T Centauri Dreams)

* Carrying a 10 Kilowatt power source enables very cheap missions to the Gravitational lens with trips taking 5 years. Multiple gravitational lens missions are needed since you can only observe what is on the exact opposite side of the sun from the gravitational lens mission
* 10kW power supply could propel a 2500 kg craft with an acceleration of 0.5g, reaching 400-700 km/s in just half a day. Greason suggested that with this acceleration, the FOCAL mission for gravitational lens telescopes requiring many craft should be achievable.
* A stream of charged particles could be generated from Phobos or Demos to slow the Plasma magnet sail to Mars. If you were slowing a 100-ton manned spacecraft, then you would need to produce 100,000 tons of particles. There would need to be multi-megawatt plant on the moons of Mars. It is possible to scale up for manned missions and to stop the craft.
* Neptune has a large enough magnetosphere where a plasma magnet sail could stop by decelerating at 5Gs. It would be a 4-month mission to Neptune
* a 10 KW system could slow an interstellar spacecraft from 20% of lightspeed over 2 years. Interstellar missions could then explore the target solar system.

https://www.nextbigf...-in-1-week.html

wow, this would be awesome

If my math is correct that would be 13.4 million/mph. Currently our fastest engines reach 25,000 mph. This would be a quantum leap in space travel and exploration. Certainly for our solar system. All the planets would be in reach. We could send advanced probes to every planet and moon that has enough water and oxygen to support life in short time spans.

Will be interesting to see if this develops.

 

[irosie91]

may I go?