Ion drive?

Post by **Robert_Moriyama** » August 11, 2004, 09:24:32 AM

Anybody remember the original Star Trek episode where an alien ship goes zipping by and Mr. Scott says, admiringly, "Ion drive!" (as if he'd like to get into that engine room and muck around a bit)? Plan for Nuclear Space Ships Daily Post - August 9, 2004 NASA is spending pounds 4m on developing futuristic electric propulsion systems that may one day carry people to Mars. The three-year programme, part of the American space agency's Prometheus project, will involve designing new kinds of nuclear power plant for spacecraft. Last week, an agreement to support nuclear power in space was signed by Nasa and the joint civilian and military government organisation Naval Reactors. The goal is to develop a high-power electric propulsion system that could significantly reduce the fuel payload needed for long- distance space travel, The Engineer magazine reported. One idea is for a nuclear-powered engine that magnetically accelerates plasma-gas with molecules which are electrically charged*. The plasma would shoot out of the thruster to push the spacecraft forward. "This could result in higher exhaust velocities than is possible from thrusters that rely on chemical reactions, " said The Engineer. The Pulsed Inductive Thruster (PIT) would operate at efficiencies of just above 70%. It would be far more efficient than the main engines of the space shuttle, for example. (C) 2004 Daily Post. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved *which would be ions, n'est ce pas?

Post by **doc** » August 12, 2004, 12:30:18 PM

The Tony Isabella feature in issue 20 was well worth a second look, too: http://www2.aphelion-webzine.com/features/heroes.htm

crb2099 · Post by **crb2099** » August 12, 2004, 10:59:08 PM

Damn, once all this science goes from fiction the science fact, what the hell will SF writers have to explore? And, yes, I know that was the subject of the story "A Case of Slow." A damned good story, too, I might add. -Chris

Post by **Robert_Moriyama** » August 16, 2004, 09:41:11 AM

wouldn't get too excited, if there's one thing NASA and their cohorts have in plentiful supply it's drawers and shelves (well, two things then). note the operative concept in all this was "may". and that coming from the same people who promised us air cars. weren't there supposed to be mars colonies like ten years ago or something?

Lee

Hell, Arthur C. Clarke figured we'd have multiple lunar colonies, an orbiting Hilton reached by Pan Am space clipper, and A.I. smart enough to go insane when confronted by conflicting goals (perfect accuracy -- and lying to the crew of the ship you are running). I can't even remember what Robert A. Heinlein thought we'd have by now, but I'm pretty sure we're at least a couple of decades into his Future History timeline. Our modern world is thus a huge failure in terms of living up to the visions of two giants of 'hard' science fiction. (And on the near-future disappointment track, James Blish had the invention of the spindizzy sometime prior to 2018 ... heard anything about practical high-capacity anti-grav / force-field generators under development?) For a fun look at the future the way it was supposed to be, check out the upcoming movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow ... giant robots, ornithopters, ray guns, fleets of dirigible aircraft carriers and battle ships. Robert M. Robert

Post by **kailhofer** » November 16, 2004, 08:24:32 PM

Time to rekindle the Ion Drive discussion, and maybe Lunar fiction as a genre too... Probe proves ion-drive technology and may uncover lunar secrets. It's been a long trip, but Europe's first Moon mission has reached its goal. SMART-1, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) way back on 27 September 2003, went into orbit around the Moon on 16 November. In January, the craft will begin the first comprehensive X-ray survey of the Moon's surface, giving scientists clues about its composition and age. This geological map will help scientists to establish exactly how the Moon formed. The size of a domestic washing machine, SMART-1 uses an innovative propulsion system that wafts the craft along on a breath of gas. It carries solar panels that convert the Sun's light into electricity, which is used to strip electrons away from atoms of xenon. This generates charged ions that are accelerated through a magnetic field and ejected from the rear of the spacecraft, producing a gentle thrust equivalent to the weight of two pennies resting on the palm of your hand. "This is the first time ever that a probe has used ion propulsion to escape from the Earth," says Bernard Foing, who heads the SMART-1 team at ESA's Space Science Department in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Conventional spacecraft engines rely on chemical reactions to generate gas, which pushes the craft forwards as it squeezes out of the engine, in the same way as a deflating party balloon will fly across a room. But in space, mass is money. Whereas chemical engines must carry two fuel substances to react together (often hydrogen and oxygen), SMART-1's ion drive carries only xenon, making it lighter and cheaper. The success of SMART-1, which stands for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology, in reaching the Moon has proved that future spacecraft could use the same engines to get to Mercury and Mars, says Foing. SMART-1 still has plenty of science to do during the two years it will spend orbiting the Moon. Its Demonstration Compact Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (D-CIXS) will make a chemical map of the lunar surface that should reveal whether the Moon was once part of the Earth. "We still don't know if the Earth and the Moon came from the same place," says Manuel Grande, a space scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK, who is responsible for D-CIXS. Many scientists believe that the Moon was formed after a gigantic collision between a Mars-sized object and the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago. Comparing the ratios of different chemical elements on the Moon and Earth could confirm this theory, says Grande. SMART-1 also carries a high-resolution camera that will photograph potential landing sites for future robotic or even human explorers. And it will search for ice in the craters at the Moon's south pole, using an infrared spectrometer. "These craters haven't seen the Sun for billions of years," says Grande, who adds that this ice would be a vital resource for a manned lunar base. The 110-million (US$85-million) craft weighs just 370 kg, and took many spiralling orbits around the Earth to build up enough speed to reach the Moon. Its epic 80-million-kilometre journey has taken 13 months, compared with the four days taken to cover 400,000 kilometres by Apollo 11 during the first Moon landing mission. (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041108/ ... 08-16.html)

Post by **kailhofer** » November 17, 2004, 08:51:36 PM

Robert Heinlein thought we'd have extreme longevity and unlimited sex by now.

It sounded good at the time...

From what I've read, I think Heinlein would had opted for the unlimited sex, no matter how the rest of the future turned out. Nate

Aphelion

Ion drive?

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