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Posted By: Hyperion Oct 19, 2004 - 08:32 am

Check this out Space fans

A new theory which has been given funding by both the American Government and NASA's Institute for advanced concepts..

The theory, which is looking highly probably, is called the, "MAG BEAM" or
magnetized-beam plasma propulsion.


To imagine it, try to think of to gloves in space, but these gloves are big and are not made of leather or wool, but highly charged Energy.

Plasma beam stations at each end of an interplanetary flight path are used to speed up and slow down space craft.

--Quote---
Under the concept, a space-based outpost station would generate a high-energy plasma beam aimed at a spaceship equipped with a sail, resulting in it being thrust out into space. In the startup phase, the plasma station would direct bursts of plasma beams at the spaceship over a period of several days, refueling in the interim, to bring the spacecraft to the right speed required for its flight between the planets.
--end quote---

Sort of like the old plans for Solar Sails, but in this case instead of using Solar Wind from Stars, high energy plasma is boosted to the sails several time from the Stations or gloves, to boost the ship via the sail up to the speeds needed to get to other planets quickly..

--quote---
"Think of a system where large power units are placed permanently in orbit around critical regions of a planet," said Winglee. "With a beamed plasma system, spacecrafts can be pushed or pulled to perform orbital transfers around the planet or accelerated to other planets at essentially no cost."

Once shot off into space, onboard propulsion units would provide a spacecraft some power for minor flight corrections, but not enough to decelerate, which would be handled by a plasma station orbiting the destination.

The stations themselves would be fuelled by nuclear power systems or solar-electric power systems augmented with fuel cells. By shifting the power source off the spacecraft and onto the station, Winglee hopes to gain an awesome level of speed.
--end quote---

How fantastic does that sound guys and it sounds and reads plausible, that's what gets me excited about it

--quote---
And the speeds involved are astronomical. While the plasma beam itself would have an intensity that would give it some additional leverage, propelling the craft at tens of kilometers per second, the real difference is due to the payload's absence. Winglee estimates that a spaceship could travel at a speed of 11.7 kilometer per second, or more than 625,000 miles a day, making it possible to make a round trip to Mars in three months, and a trip to Jupiter and back in a year. Using conventional rocket systems, a round trip to Mars takes about 2.6 years, according to Winglee.

The Mag-beam combines the key features of high-power beam plasma sources along with an earlier concept that Winglee was developing called Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma propulsion, or M2P2, where spacecrafts would be encased in a plasma bubble and sail across the galaxy on solar winds. It had several problems, although Winglee believes they've been resolved with Mag-beam.
--end quote---

The actual site were you can read the full story is right here....

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,65391,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

There are two pages to the story, one straight after that one, link is at the bottom of the first page..

In essence, they fire a ship off to a planet, when it arrives, the ship slows it's self down manually over a certain time period, probably circling the targeted planet till a stop is reached.

Then they build another glove-or way station at that planet, which by the sounds of it, doesn't have to be manned and be automated, then that's one route done with a start glove-station point, and an end glove-station point to slow the incoming ships down better, and drag the incoming ships in...

The they do it all over again to another target planet..

It's like having jump gates all around our Solar System hehe

Man this sort of science gets me really excited and hopeful for the future of our race

What say you all? impressive science or what??

Hyperion

Posted By: Axzazz De`Nyde Oct 19, 2004 - 05:40 pm

Very cool. I'd hate to be on a ship that didn't have enough fuel to decelerate, though. Imagine making a routine round-trip flight outsystem, only to find that the decelerator wasn't working and you'd either ram the planet or just keep going and going and going... But even keeping enough fuel to decelerate, you could eliminate the fuel needed to accelerate, thereby halving the payload, and as long as there was a working decelerator, you'd save that fuel for the next trip, thereby greatly reducing the cost.

Posted By: Aldan Oct 19, 2004 - 07:25 pm

Now, does anyone but me see any potential problems with these plans? Axzazz hit a small part of it, but I don't want to cover all of it until the rest of you think and post a bit...

Posted By: Hyperion Oct 20, 2004 - 11:09 am

Yeah there are a good few problems that would need ironing out until safety percentages/margins reached an acceptable level, but as a scientific approach to interplanetary travel, I think it's good science.

At the moment I don't think it's solid science, as things like way stations going down for some reason, need to be resolved, as Axzazz states in his post.

Also I am trying to figure out what the acceleration would be like. Is it a gradual boosting approach to reach good speeds, or is that first hit with the plasma boost a -doozy!- ? because if it's a doozy, then G-force comes into the equation seriously lol.

Same concept as with rail guns, and trying to launch a manned something into orbit via rail gun, the initial acceleration is far to much, and a human would just get squished

But apart from the initial acceleration issue, when you're in space, the gradual approach would be fine, as there is no atmosphere to constantly bash you and your craft, so momentum can be gradually nudged to reach great speeds..

Also there is the whole Nuclear power issue, do we have a stable nuclear power system that we could trust to run such a station orbiting a planet many miles from Earth.

There are a good few problems that they need to iron out, but as I concept that has gotten funding for further research, it gives me great HOPE for the future

Hyperion

Posted By: Aldan Oct 22, 2004 - 11:26 pm

Nicely done, Hype! Another thing that I don't know enough about to be sure that it'd be a problem or not is basically what would the plasma push against? With the current fuels the matter is expelled due to it being burned, and the mass of the waste matter (smoke and other detritus of the burn) that exits the nozzles is what the rest of the matter pushes against and what then causes the rocket to move forward in a vacuum.
However, it seems as though, to me, that plasma, moving at the high speed it would be moving in, would lack something to push AGAINST and so would have more of a laser-type of effect than a rocket-type, and so wouldn't really move it forward.
However, as I said, I'm not sure of this, as I dont' really understand the technology, and as I'm happy to admit (well, maybe happy isn't the word, but it'll do, I suppose...) I suck at math. I'm not awful, but I don't like it and I DO suck at geometry (due to a crappy first-year teacher that I had in high school), so I couldn't ever go higher than Trigonometry and so don't have a really strong scientific background...

Posted By: Hyperion Oct 24, 2004 - 05:14 am

I think the concept behind the propulsion is the plasma pushing against some form of Sail, whether it be energy in it's makeup, or a solid of some sort.

But the basic idea, is plasma hits sail which then drags/pushes, and in the slowing down side of things, even pulls, the ship.

Hyperion

Posted By: Jdogg Oct 27, 2004 - 02:14 am

None of this is a patch on the Orion project. Some bright spark had the idea of...wait for it...exploding nuclear bombs underneath a rocket as propulsion - one design called for a craft of 40 million tons mass!
http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/orion.htm There are still designs around for nuclear powered rockets check out http://www.nuclearspace.com/A_PWrussview_FINX.htm

Posted By: Minstrel Nov 05, 2004 - 01:14 pm

This is a pretty old idea, actually- revamped for the 2000's.

De-accelleration: You could probably focus the beam with a very small amount of energy running into it, and then pump up your power output a little at a time. This would take care of the "dead-end rope" idea of full retro blast.

What I'm wondering is- how do they keep it plasma in an unpressurized environment? As most of you probably know, plasma is superheated gas that's been compressed WAY past the point where it should have become a liquid. But the fact that it's heated stops it from becoming one, so it becomes a plasma instead. how do they keep up the pressure/heat in deep space?

Maybe they found some way of making it hold together hard enough to produce pressure (and therefore- heat) by magnitizing it... you'd think that's just cut it's way through the Sail ship though.

heh: "The beam's to HOT!!! DON'T FIR- YOU JACKASS!!!" .... "NASA is not going to like this..."

Posted By: Axzazz De`Nyde Nov 05, 2004 - 04:03 pm

There's a lot of plasma in space. It's the ionization that makes it plasma. Especially near the magnetic fields of planets (Jupiter, for instance), but also streaming out from stars, black holes, etc. Interstellar dust is ionized by cosmic radiation...

Posted By: Minstrel Nov 05, 2004 - 07:19 pm

Ah. We may be talking about two different kinds of plasma. I'm talking about nuclear fusion through a tokamok type plasma:

"An electrically neutral, highly ionized gas composed of ions, electrons, and neutral particles. It is a phase of matter distinct from solids, liquids, and normal gases."

Another defination of plasma is:

3. Unorganized material; elementary matter.


You think? O.-

Posted By: Axzazz De`Nyde Nov 07, 2004 - 01:48 am

---

Quote:

The solar system and the bulk of the universe comprises matter which is mostly in the form of a plasma. Plasma is a very hot gas in which the electrons have been stripped from atoms to form a gas of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions.

---

Posted By: JUZ9 Dec 01, 2004 - 12:07 pm

In a plasma (essentially a collection of positive and negative particles with approximately a net zero charge) the apparent temperature is determined by the average particle speed. In an interplanetary area in deep space one might measure a 10-9 Torr vacuum in which there are few particles per unit volume. If you measure the temperature of the region with a standard thermometer you will probably find that the temperature is in the neighborhood of liquid nitrogen (~78 Kelvin or so). The particles have an average net velocity and if one determines an effective temperature for such rapidly moving particles one might find that the calculated temperature is very high compared to what one is normally accustomed to.

I have a lot of concerns about the soundness of the magnetized-beam plasma propulsion system approach but am willing to watch what others are doing and make comments, etc as I deem appropriate.

I do have the math background (other than a weakness in tensor mathematics) to comprehend propulsion arguments and have a background in high energy particle physics, lasers, microwaves, and related areas.

JUZ9