Re: starship-design: Plasma Engine

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/29/98 3:57:35 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:

>Does anyone know anything else about this?
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>"The most amazing thing I saw this week was the rocket engine of the future.
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>It's been the life's work of astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz. He started
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>working on the plasma engine in college, and now, at age 48, he's got a
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>demonstration version of the engine in his lab in Houston. The scale model
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>is about 30 feet long.
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>I'm not a plasma physicist, but Chang-Diaz is, and he explains the engine
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>this way: You put a small amount of hydrogen into one end of the engine.
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>It's turned into plasma, a burning gas as hot as the surface of the sun.
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>Radio waves from an on-board transmitter are used to create the plasma and
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>then a series of electromagnets that circle the central chamber keep the
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>plasma from touching the metal sides of the engine. The super-hot plasma is
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>then moved down to the exhaust nozzle, where is pushes the engine away.
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>Unlike engines that use solid or liquid fuel, the plasma engine is much more
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>efficient. Chang-Diaz says it gets more miles per gallon than you can
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>imagine. In addition, it's much faster than anything in use today. It can
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>travel from the Earth to Mars in 90 days. That's twice as fast as current
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>technology allows.
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>Chang-Diaz is working with a group of college students to develop the engine
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>and one of them, Lenny Cassady, has worked out a flight plan. He believes it
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>will be ready to launch on May 16, 2018. That's about the time Lenny says
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>he'd be ready to fly the plasma-powered spaceship to Mars."
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>Lee

In general, its like a very big ion drive.  Very effectiv,but dependant on an
external power source.  So while it may be much more "fuel efficent" on
reactino mass, it may not be in power plant fuel.

Kelly