Ready for some interplanetary exploration? We've had the
force shields,
currency, and
refuel stations all sorted out for a while, and now here come the ion thrusters we've been missing to make manned trips to Mars really viable. Currently, a return journey to Mars can take up to two years, with crew members having to wait a full year for the planets to realign, but with ion propulsion -- which uses electricity to accelerate ions and produce small but longevous thrust -- ships can get there within a reasonably tight 39-day window. Ion propulsion rocket engines were first deployed successfully by NASA in the Deep Space 1 probe in 1998, and the latest iteration's successful Earth-bound testing has led to plans for a flight to the moon and use on the International Space Station as test scenarios for the technology. It's all still very much in the early stages, of course, but should all that testing, checking, and refinement bear fruit, we might finally have a whole new world to colonize and sell sneakers on.
[Thanks, Davis]
posted October 20th 2009 10:31AM
Yo Ion propulsion engine, I'm really happy for you and I'ma let you finish but the warp drive has the fastest propulsion of all time, of all time!
*sigh*
Sup dog! I heard you like not knowing when to give a meme up, so I put a dead horse in your dead horse, so you can beat it while you beat it.
@Phrank: ironeeeeee
If they Ever make the Real Starship Enterprise in my lifetime ..ill cry
Mars(mass) effect FTW!
I think this is a fantastic idea. I would love to explore another planet. There is no question in my mind that there is life on other planets so it will be nice to see what other life forms are out there. That is kinda scary too... but more intriguing than anything else.
The real question is how long it would take to reach Uranus! :3
The real problem isn't reaching it, its the amount of lubricant needed to enter it.
That joke is ancient, we should rename the damn planet into something less prone to misinterpretation - Urectum sounds about right.
isnt that the ship from mass effect?
39 DAYS! 39 DAYS! Hitler took Poland in 30 days!!!
Invading Poland isn't all that hard. Just have your army march in backwards and tell them you're leaving. Should just take a few days.
I'll ride one of this thing in 22nd century
Mars, bitches!
This is redicoulous !
Ion drive is so "passé" !
For all the money they are investing in this they should forget about it and invest in warp drive ! This way instead of the 39 days, we would get there in 39 minutes, throttle at half power !
Basically, Nasa should look at what Zefram Cochrane did and base their research on this !
Actually, they had a program before and shut it down !
"Put a man on Mars? How about we put a man in an apartment! It's cold out there." - David Cross
We could even do both if we'd cut back on defense and tax the rich.
@petey
orders of magnitude? really?
Nasa's budget for 2009 - $17.6bn
US federal foreign aid for 2008 - $26bn including several billion to Isreal and Egypt to buy guns...
Now excuse me if I don't understand the meaning of 'orders of magnitude' but that doesn't seem like one to me...
let's break it down a little more.
NASA's budget for explorations systems for 2009: $3.9 billion
Foreign aid budget for 2009: $39 billion (funding for International Affairs Budget for the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign affairs agencies).
order of magnitude: 10x
Sounds about right. Of course, Petey did saw "orders of magnitude", which does imply more like 100x or 1000x. Whatever.
NASA should spend the money they get more wisely then on the Ares/Orion system. For crying out loud, we are paying billions to develop a rocket which duplicates the capabilities of rockets already in use around the world (including the delta iv). Where is the GAO when you need them?
The future looks awfully like the past.
Damn, I really hope we get something done with this in my lifetime.
Fools! The Normandy used a Mass Effect engine, not ion propulsion. If you wanted a ship powered by ion propulsion, you should have used a picture of Discovery or Leonov from 2001/2010.
How about plasma or something like that?
"Mass Effect" rules!
cant wait till they make a star trek ship!
I am not sure why so many people are complaining... We have come so far in the world of technology. We need to take this one step at a time. We do not have the technology for warp drive sadly. We can hardly handle ion propulsion as it is. 39 days from 2 years? And you want is faster? That’s crazy... we should be happy they (NASA) are finally thinking about implementing it. No one else has, so it is welcome with open arms as far as I am concerned.
My opinion as far as war on earth is that war is unavoidable. You always have someone pissed off in the world and someone else with the deep pockets and ego to match to start a fight. Peace on earth would be great but with cultures as different and disagreeable as the ones we know. Just imagine if everyone accepted one another as they are, broke all borders and actually became the People of Earth rather than seeing people as Americans, Brits, or Parisians or what ever your background may be. That day will be a great day. Disagree with me if you will but it is something to spare a thought about.
As far as the concept goes it seems great. Ion engines create minimal G force while accelerating too very high speeds. Warp drive creates quite a bit of inertia requiring some method to counteract this force. As talked about a liquid filled suit would be the best choice right now but is not the most ideal option as it is a rigid suit. Not sure about you but I think I would want to be able to move around freely if I were to go on a trip in space. Some sort of deflection system as far as I understand would be required or it would tear the ship into pieces from a spec of space dust if your speed was high enough. If I am not mistaken even small debris becomes a problem at 300mph+. Perhaps they could polarize the hull and create some sort of electromagnetic shield. I seen a few people say something about spinning the ship around 180 degrees once half the trip is done but wouldst that be the highest point of velocity? If so wouldn’t such a turn rip the ship into pieces? A more feasible idea may be having bi-directional ion thrusters.. On say ion nacelles the ship I would presume would have a secondary propulsion system of some sort for small manoeuvres.
Just some thoughts from my point of view. Feel free to point out any inconsistency as I am not an engineer nor do I have any detailed knowledge on ion propulsion. Cool stuff though :)
"We do not have the technology for warp drive sadly."
Yes we do. We just haven't figured out how to safely collect the particles coming from Steve Jobs.
Screw mars. Imagine a probe having this drive. The cumulative speed that it could achieve over a 1 year period.
As the article mentioned, they already used ion drives on probes as 'early' as 1998
"NASA has developed an ion thruster called NSTAR for use in their interplanetary missions. This thruster was tested in the highly successful space probe Deep Space 1, launched in 1998."
(http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/factsheets/xips/nstar/ionengine.html)
And even the japanese used them:
"The Japanese space agency's Hayabusa, which was launched in 2003 and successfully rendezvoused with the asteroid 25143 Itokawa and remained in close proximity for many months to collect samples and information, is powered by four xenon Ion Engines"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_engine For a more extensive list
Haha, gave me a good laugh. That comment i made about not having the technology was meant as wide general statement including the other technologies it would take to use warp without making us some smear on the back of a space ship :P
1/4 impulse power Mr Sulu...
awesome.
i was reading some of the comments, just wanna ad my $0.02 to some of the interesting topics touched on: if E = mc^2 so... having 2 ion engines will get us there faster, just not exactly double.
it appears the acceleration will be so slow it will hardly be noticeable... as in, if you are comparing, say, a car's acceleration which is powerful but only lasts a few seconds before it "stops" accelerating and the car reaches an equilibrium between velocity, acceleration, wind resistence, friction etc.
since we don't have to worry about things like that in space, acceleration can keep going far and above. of course, a car engine has such acceleration because we are using gravity and friction to accelerate mass. with the ion engine we need to accelerate mass by flinging highly charged, erm, ions, out the back-port of the craft.... not exactly stellar edge of your seat tummy churning acceleration by any means..... but instead of a "burn" of 90 seconds or 2 minutes or however long conventional rockets can push...... this thing just keeps pushing. minutes turn into hours, hours into days, days into weeks.
i don't think even using another planet to change course (unless you get real real REAL close) will create any big G's to write home about either. do we notice the spinning of the earth? that's about 15,000km's every 24hrs. and then, how about the earth spinning around the sun?
i think these "ion" drives can be improved over time and who knows... that 39 day roundtrop may come down to 10 days or 5 days. even with the slow moving "sailboat" acceleration we're talking about here, it feels like the dawn of the space age... compared with the dawn of the centuries gone bye when man ventured out on sea bound ships. 1492. 1770, etc.
perhaps the dawn of a new space exploration era will be seen in our lifetimes :) fingers x'd.