I need one for the Freeway!

[Ender]

Plasma Beam for 90-Day Mars Visit
Source: World Entertainment News Network
American scientists have developed a propulsion idea for spacecraft and claim it would enable a 90-day round trip to Mars. Using current technology, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their mission and return to Earth, but the propulsion spacecraft could make it in just 3 months. It would use a space station to fire a beam of magnetised particles at a solar sail mounted on a spacecraft. This plasma beam would then make use of repulsive forces to propel the spacecraft along at high speeds.

The speeds would increase with the size of the plasma beam, say the team behind the concept - which is called Mag-Beam.

Project leader Robert Winglee of the University of Washington estimates that a control nozzle 32 metres (100 feet) wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometres per second, (6.6 miles per second). NASA has invested $75,000 (GBP41,500) in a six-month study to validate the concept. (ZG/WNWCCB/GES)

 

[Rich Parsons]

Plasma Beam for 90-Day Mars Visit
Source: World Entertainment News Network
American scientists have developed a propulsion idea for spacecraft and claim it would enable a 90-day round trip to Mars. Using current technology, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their mission and return to Earth, but the propulsion spacecraft could make it in just 3 months. It would use a space station to fire a beam of magnetised particles at a solar sail mounted on a spacecraft. This plasma beam would then make use of repulsive forces to propel the spacecraft along at high speeds.

The speeds would increase with the size of the plasma beam, say the team behind the concept - which is called Mag-Beam.

Project leader Robert Winglee of the University of Washington estimates that a control nozzle 32 metres (100 feet) wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometres per second, (6.6 miles per second). NASA has invested $75,000 (GBP41,500) in a six-month study to validate the concept. (ZG/WNWCCB/GES)

First, this sounds really cool. Space travel and all and to other planets in days versus months to years.

Yet, I am confused. The beam will propel the "Ship" and its' sail towards Mars, which I can see with no gravity and a force acting upon it, very little is needed to accelerate, and then to travel. It is the return trip that has me all confused though. Do they build a similiar device and run it on remote on Mars? Or are they going to take the old sailing of tacking the wind and cutting back and forth, which would mean it would take longer to get back then to get there.

Curious

 

[Flatlander]

Rich, I read up on this a bit, and it seems as though their model involves another plasma beam generator at the destination to propel the craft for the return trip.

What confuses me is, this thing would require a significant power supply. I'm curious as to how they plan to power it.

 

[Rich Parsons]

Rich, I read up on this a bit, and it seems as though their model involves another plasma beam generator at the destination to propel the craft for the return trip.

What confuses me is, this thing would require a significant power supply. I'm curious as to how they plan to power it.

Power would be an issue. Yet, unless they need a high voltage and low amperage for a short period of time to cause the acceleration, in which case, then some solar cells, combined with fuel cell technology would be the guess, that many would make. I would bet on a small Nuclear Reactor the size of a computer monitor to a oven, to generate the power. Yet, this would put the planet at risk of us contaminating it, before a serious and complete exploration and or usage. . Then again with the increase in fuel cell technoogy and the project "Beam" technology used here, there could be a little black box, that the U.S. Governement contracts out to defense suppliers, or universities to design this "Black Box" to generate "X" amount of power or energy required.

Still interesting.

 

[shesulsa]

Star Trek, here we come!

 

[Ronald R. Harbers]

I Volunteer!

 

[MA-Caver]

It would seem to me that if all these countries; ours, Korea, Iran, Russia, China, England, France and whomever else would just quit fiddling around trying to kill everyone with Nuclear reactions they can get together and come up with a safe powersource to propel spacecrafts to far off destinations... and of course back again.
I suspect that we've always had the technology but paranoids in the defense department and elsewhere worry about the "bad-guys" getting ahold of it or copying it and use it for evil purposes.
Look at the pics and think about the amount of energy produced (and WASTED) that could be used for productive purposes.