starship-design: Plasma Drive...

["Adam Crowl" <ajcrowlx2@ozemail.com.au>]

Hi SD,

Well here's the URL for the Final Report on the Stable Plasma power storage
concept...

http://peaches.niac.usra.edu/studies/9801/9801Final/SewardFinal.pdf

...it requires Adobe Acrobat 3.0. It seems to have great potential and the
plasma could be powered up by any old energy source, via a microwave
injector or some such. Theoretically a stable plasma could be put in a jet
engine and the aircraft would require NO fuel, and still have enough power
to travel around the world! It'd just compress and heat normal air...
Applied to a space launcher the savings could be immense, and applied to a
Mars mission the mass would go from ~ 600 t [split between three launches]
to one launch of about 120 t! That's an 80% saving in mass and God knows how
much in equipment and development.

Ultimately it could go into a system using small sub-plasmas for thrust and
achieve maybe 60,000 s Isp... I can see real potential for this coupled with
a Bussard fusor for high speed Deep Space missions...

Adam