A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.
Honestly I think rockets are the most inefficient, resource hogging, logically impractical way possible to achieve spaceflight. opposed to other ways of acquiring orbit, most space agencies rather construct a giant tube fill it with thousands of pounds of fuel and ignite it.
It's been proven to work and not blow up or fail, besides challenger rest in peace.<3 so why fix a good thing? Especially with untested ways that could essentially raise the cost far beyond what the gazillipn gallons of fueldo.
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Like your opinion on the matter is worth shit, ignorant high school pussy.
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A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.
Honestly I think rockets are the most inefficient, resource hogging, logically impractical way possible to achieve spaceflight. opposed to other ways of acquiring orbit, most space agencies rather construct a giant tube fill it with thousands of pounds of fuel and ignite it.
That's actually still the only way to achieve spaceflight. Which is to say, it takes a shitload of energy to leave orbit. The new engine is only effective when it comes to actually travelling through space.
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A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.
Honestly I think rockets are the most inefficient, resource hogging, logically impractical way possible to achieve spaceflight. opposed to other ways of acquiring orbit, most space agencies rather construct a giant tube fill it with thousands of pounds of fuel and ignite it.
That's actually still the only way to achieve spaceflight. Which is to say, it takes a shitload of energy to leave orbit. The new engine is only effective when it comes to actually travelling through space.
Virgin Galactic's planes are a much better approach, IMO.
------- Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition that's troublesome. --Isaac Asimov
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What ever happened to the electromagnetic propulsion tests they did?
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allsmiles
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Quote: from DanMinority at 11:41 pm on Mar. 6, 2010
It's been proven to work and not blow up or fail, besides challenger rest in peace.<3 so why fix a good thing? Especially with untested ways that could essentially raise the cost far beyond what the gazillipn gallons of fueldo.
Why fix a good thing? It's not a good thing... it's brute force... the same propulsion that spirals out to other planets using some kinda gravity boost.....or something, uses the exact opposite approach to get there in the first place. Whatever happened to the conservation of delta-v being paramount? Spiral into orbit, or better yet, an assisted orbit ie a lift. Hell, Newton's Cannonball holds concepts much more efficient than what we currently use.
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Basically the way we do things now is once a spacecraft leaves Earth orbit it just coasts the way to its destination using gravity to slingshot it around planets along the way. Basically its like driving a car to the top of a high hill and then putting it in neutral and coasting downhill till you get where you're going. Sure it works but it takes alot longer then it would if you turn the car on and give it a small amount of gas along the way.
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Event Horizon
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Slingshots are about the most effective way to accelerate a space-craft to a respectable speed without having to carry enormous amounts of fuel and thus have a terribly great inertia--which in turn requires more fuel to slow it down upon approach. It takes a hell of a lot of energy to reach escape velocity, and NASA has simply chosen to go the route of just gettin-er-up there. I don't think it's the most practical, but it is a tried and true method, and missile launches have proven to be the easiest to plan and safest to execute [not that they've tried much else with any degree of seriousness].
Like I said earlier, the future of spaceflight is with trans-atmospheric planes like Virgin Galactic's. With fueling stations in GS orbit, those things would be cheap, safe, and could be used over and over again with a much greater rapidity.
------- Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition that's troublesome. --Isaac Asimov
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A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.
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