Ex-Astronaut Developing Plasma Rocket To Revitalize NASA 277
TechReviewAl writes "Former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz believes that the private sector can revitalize NASA, and his company is developing a plasma rocket to back up that claim. Chang Diaz argues that private industry can be used to develop much of the basic technology needed for space exploration, allowing NASA to focus on more sophisticated and critical components. His company, Ad Astra, is developing a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMR) that will be used to reposition the International Space Station. Last week, the rocket passed an important milestone in testing — reaching 200 kilowatts (enough to move the ISS). A video of the rocket can be seen on Ad Astra's site."
Awesome. (Score:4, Funny)
Bonus points for the space invaders noises it apparently makes.
Here, let me rephrse it for you.... (Score:2, Funny)
There, I hope that making more sense.
Re:Awesome. (Score:1, Funny)
and it's powered by an all Rush mix tape and 2 liters of orange soda.
That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They've been working on this for a while now (Score:4, Funny)
No, no, no. These VASIMR experiments are entirely new. You must be thinking of the old VALKILMER experiments.
Re:"200Kw, which is enough to move the ISS" (Score:3, Funny)
(I'd imagine 200kW is needed for regular orbital corrections for the full ISS when all modules are in place, but I'm probably wrong. But here's something better:)
No--because of NASA cuts, lawmakers have just ruled that physicists must add an additional ISS equation to quantum mechanics, governing the behavior of the ISS in orbit around Earth, so that quantization will inhibit orbital decay. They picked an equation where the only resonant energies were the only interesting orbits. Since the energies are quantized, we can't just nudge the ISS a little bit at a time, now that it has its own wavefunction, duh!
Come to think of it, I bet I could design a super-efficient combustion engine that relies on macro-scale space quantization. I bet I can lobby a group to get my favorite wavefunction on the books for that, as well! ;)
Batteries (Score:1, Funny)
If only we could invent some device that could store energy for a limited amount of time so that we could output more energy than we take in, if only periodically.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Just how big (Score:2, Funny)
Just how big of a rocket do you need to go from one movie studio lot to another?
Re:Awesome. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awesome. (Score:2, Funny)
Are you sure its not Mentos and Diet Coke?
Re:Another ex-NASA type trying to cash in (Score:4, Funny)
Um... because for us real humans, money is not our only (pointless) reason of existence.
That's just something poor people say.
Re:acronym (Score:1, Funny)
Oh my stars!! That was quite the "zing".
Re:Another ex-NASA type trying to cash in (Score:3, Funny)
So we've got a _really smart_ guy we've paid to educate, paid for many years to perform exactly 7 times, paid to direct a "cool" program, and now that we've shelled out all that money, he's investing some of it in hopes of selling us some product we spent years paying him to learn about.
By the way...how do you amass enough cash to personally invest significantly in this kind of endeavor, considering otherwise "normal" governmental salaries in the 70-130k/year range? Or is he primarily a front man - a very smart one - who is helping to get money from others (perhaps old colleagues with strings to government funds?) to pursue this research.
I'm not saying he's not doing interesting, and possibly valuable, research, but I'm not about to give him a free pass just because he's got a doctorate and a handful of mission patches. Now, if he's made a bunch of money doing other things (dot com bubble investor?), and is pursuing this as a purely speculative path, then good for him.
Honestly, you know what the above reads like? I'll summarize it for you:
Whaaaaa! He's a succesful astronaut who spent the better part of his life doing something totally awesome and now gets to spend another part of his life doing yet more totally awesome stuff while I sit here staring at my penis and wondering why it is so tiny. Not fair!
Jealous much?
This guy went up 7 times, each time knowing fully well that there's a pretty decent chance the whole thing would end up in a big-ass ball of flame. Do you also complain about military personnel being schooled and trained on your dime? All they ever do is kill people, this guy has risked his life for the sake of science.