5 years of thrusting? can you please stop now?

[kinnison]

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/NASA-rocket-engine-runs-5-years-still-not-4623930.php

NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project will shut down in a month after 48,000 hours of thrusting

[Canopus]

Cool but i'm not a big fan of Ion thrusters. They are good for unmanned craft but i wish some money would go into better systems.

[Themohawkninja]

Cool but i'm not a big fan of Ion thrusters. They are good for unmanned craft but i wish some money would go into better systems.

What propulsion systems would you like to see money be put into?

OT: 30 million Newton seconds of ISP... that should suffice for getting anywhere in the Solar system.

[The Jedi Master]

"All right, start it up..."

Five years later...

"OK, it works, we can stop."

[Voidryder]

"All right, start'er up."

30 minutes later....

"Looking good. Great data. Shut her down in three...two..wha?? No shut-off command? We forgot to program a shut-off command?? Really?"

30 minutes later...

"Ok, here's the plan. Tell Administration it's a long duration endurance burn. Everybody got that? Long duration endurance burn."

[Canopus]

What propulsion systems would you like to see money be put into?

OT: 30 million Newton seconds of ISP... that should suffice for getting anywhere in the Solar system.

Something more radical and maybe more Dangerous with more thrust. The Ion engine can get you anywhere in the sol system but it may take years.

[Scotius]

Anything capable of taking the humans to other planets and returning them before they die from radiation/muscle atrophy/old age Seriously, we send a probe on 15 years long journey and call it a great success? We had a freaking nuclear engine capable of sending astronauts to Mars 50 years ago And where we are now? In the same place, doing te same things - only getting prettier pictures out of it.

[Kryten]

You had chemical engines able to send humans to Mars 50 years ago as well. The issue with doing it isn't ISP, thrust, radioactivity, any of those. It's money. No bucks, no buck rogers.

[The Jedi Master]

You had chemical engines able to send humans to Mars 50 years ago as well. The issue with doing it isn't ISP, thrust, radioactivity, any of those. It's money. No bucks, no buck rogers.

For once, someone here agrees with me.

[Nibb31]

Not enough thrust ? Build a grid with 2000 of these suckers and get moving !

[DerekL1963]

We had a freaking nuclear engine capable of sending astronauts to Mars 50 years ago And where we are now? In the same place, doing te same things - only getting prettier pictures out of it.

We had a theoretical nuclear engine that could potentially take us to Mars. But development was cancelled before any significant testing and development was accomplished.

Seriously - with all the hype around the Orion drive, people forget (charitably assuming they were educated in the first place, rather than just parroting the faulty, misleading, and incomplete information that generally permeates the discussion) that not one single component of the Orion has been tested at full scale. The extremely crude subscale proof of concept tests relied on slightly different physical effects to boot.

[Canopus]

We had a theoretical nuclear engine that could potentially take us to Mars. But development was cancelled before any significant testing and development was accomplished.

Seriously - with all the hype around the Orion drive, people forget (charitably assuming they were educated in the first place, rather than just parroting the faulty, misleading, and incomplete information that generally permeates the discussion) that not one single component of the Orion has been tested at full scale. The extremely crude subscale proof of concept tests relied on slightly different physical effects to boot.

NTR's were full scale tested and i think that is what he was talking about.

[Scotius]

Absolutely. I meant NERVA and her cousins, not Orion.

[metaphor]

NTRs are promising and the research could definitely be started up again. The problem with them is mainly that the public distrusts anything with the word "nuclear" in it so the politicians aren't so keen to fund it.

NASA has a politics problem more than a money problem. We could have human missions to Mars in 20 years for ~$100 billion. That's only about a 25% increase to NASA's current budget, or about 0.03% of the US's GDP.

On topic, higher power ion engines are very promising. High-power versions like the one that would be developed for the asteroid retrieval mission could be used to send cargo for human missions to Mars.

[DerekL1963]

Absolutely. I meant NERVA and her cousins, not Orion.

My apologies, but the date you gave seemed a closer match to Orion than NERVA. But though there were full scale prototype tests of NERVA and her cousins, there's still a long tough slog between prototypes and flight ready hardware. Granted the gap is not as great as Orion, but it's there none the less.

[Nuke]

Not enough thrust ? Build a grid with 2000 of these suckers and get moving !

power requirements would be astronomical. so bring a 1MW nuclear reactor with you. at that point you are better off putting all the power into an mpd thruster array for several orders of magnitude more thrust over ion engines (in the ones to tens of newtons range, so its still a little slow, but not as much), with really high isp.

[StainX]

We could get anywere, if we would have some better knowledge of the fusion technology... with something like this: Fusion Rocket

[Canopus]

We could get anywere, if we would have some better knowledge of the fusion technology... with something like this: Fusion Rocket

There are many propulsion technologies that could be build today with ridiculus efficency and thrust we wouldn't even need Fusion.

[Kerbface]

The title of this thread seems rather dubious.

[bivouac]

Seriously - with all the hype around the Orion drive, people forget (charitably assuming they were educated in the first place, rather than just parroting the faulty, misleading, and incomplete information that generally permeates the discussion) that not one single component of the Orion has been tested at full scale. The extremely crude subscale proof of concept tests relied on slightly different physical effects to boot.

The idea behind building hype is to secure R&D funding. Get people all excited so they throw dollars at you. (Or at least show progress and potential.)

Not enough thrust ? Build a grid with 2000 of these suckers and get moving !

(I know you're being facetious, I just feel like answering. ) The amount of Xenon gas you would need to do that would be... A lot. It's over $100 per 100g of the material. While that may not sound too bad, we need to consider that it is considerably heavier than most other things. The further down the periodic table you go, the heavier you get. The differences are not subtle either.

[Moon Goddess]

power requirements would be astronomical. so bring a 1MW nuclear reactor with you. at that point you are better off putting all the power into an mpd thruster array for several orders of magnitude more thrust over ion engines (in the ones to tens of newtons range, so its still a little slow, but not as much), with really high isp.

We could get anywere, if we would have some better knowledge of the fusion technology... with something like this: Fusion Rocket

If we had Fusion that whole 1MW for ion drive would be trivial we wouldn't need the fusion rocket.

[EvilotionCR2]

We should use the Orion.And 5 years of thrusting lol,and 100$ per 100g...

[m4v]

why do you want bigger rockets? for send people to Mars and to do what? to pick some rocks and plant a flag? We aren't kerbals, I would much rather see money go to unmanned craft that can do the same science than a manned one at a fraction of the cost.

[Good_Apollo]

why do you want bigger rockets? for send people to Mars and to do what? to pick some rocks and plant a flag? We aren't kerbals, I would much rather see money go to unmanned craft that can do the same science than a manned one at a fraction of the cost.

Because human beings actually being there would be a monumental moment in history?

That's the point in and of itself, if we get some science done too that's just the icing on the cake. Humans are driven by achievement and discovery.

[Scotius]

And what if Curiosity finds life on Mars? It can't really study it - to do that you would need to send scientists there. And probes are limited in their capabilities - humans are much more versatile. As such can make discoveries impossible for probes.