| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| Scientist eyes 39-day voyage to Mars |
| 2010-02-27 |
| A journey from Earth to Mars could soon take just 39 days, cutting current travel time nearly six times, a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency NASA has said. Former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket -- now on track for lift-off after decades of development. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket -- to give its full name -- is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration. NASA, still reeling from a political decision to cancel its Constellation program that would have returned a human to the moon by the end of the decade, has called on firms to provide new technology to power rovers or even future manned missions. |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #1 You lift a real expensive engine with a real expensive nuclear reactor and yeah, it'll use less fuel. This suits NASA just fine. They want to conduct a few very large very expensive launches per mission. But that's the very reason why launching stuff is so expensive for NASA (and for the rest of us). They won't mass-produce rockets even if their life and the existance of the agency depended on it. They're going to keep trying to make a silk purse out of heavy-lift sows ears until the economy goes under for other reasons and we won't be able to afford a NASA anymore. This may have already happened. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-02-27 13:54 |