Plasma Beam Eyed in Space Travel: Lakshmi Sandhana 10.19.04

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Plasma Beam Eyed in Space Travel


Lakshmi Sandhana 10.19.04

An artist's conception of a plasma station (lower left) applying a magnetized beam of ionized plasma to a spacecraft
bound for Jupiter.
Imagine spaceships being catapulted and caught in space using "gloves" of high-energy plasma beams.
That's the vision of Robert Winglee, a professor at the University of Washington who is leading the team that's
pioneering the concept of the Mag-beam, or magnetized-beam plasma propulsion. Winglee wants to incorporate
plasma beam stations at each end of an interplanetary flight path to speed up and slow down a spacecraft.
The idea began receiving attention from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts when the institute awarded $75,000
earlier this month to identify the challenges involved in implementing it.
Under the concept, a space-based outpost station would generate a high-energy plasma beam aimed at a spaceship
equipped with a sail, resulting in it being thrust out into space. In the startup phase, the plasma station would direct
bursts of plasma beams at the spaceship over a period of several days, refueling in the interim, to bring the spacecraft
to the right speed required for its flight between the planets.
"Think of a system where large power units are placed permanently in orbit around critical regions of a planet," said
Winglee. "With a beamed plasma system, spacecrafts can be pushed or pulled to perform orbital transfers around the
planet or accelerated to other planets at essentially no cost."
Once shot off into space, onboard propulsion units would provide a spacecraft some power for minor flight
corrections, but not enough to decelerate, which would be handled by a plasma station orbiting the destination.
The stations themselves would be fueled by nuclear power systems or solar-electric power systems augmented with
fuel cells. By shifting the power source off the spacecraft and onto the station, Winglee hopes to gain an awesome
level of speed.
Currently, rockets carry their propulsion systems on board, which means that the system not only has to move the
spacecraft built around it, but it has to move itself, too. To ship a payload of 100 kilograms to Mars, scientists have to
build a spacecraft many times that weight in order to support all the systems necessary to successfully deliver it. Since
the propulsion system is using some of its energy to move itself, spaceships travel more slowly and can't carry as
much as they could otherwise.
"The difference here is that in a regular system you have to carry the power and the fuel and payload, so you end up
adding a whole lot of mass onto the spacecraft and your top speed is certainly limited," said Winglee. "By putting the
energy and the fuel on something that is fixed around a planet, when you push the payload you can go at much faster
speeds when you are not carrying the stuff."
And the speeds involved are astronomical. While the plasma beam itself would have an intensity that would give it
some additional leverage, propelling the craft at tens of kilometers per second, the real difference is due to the
payload's absence. Winglee estimates that a spaceship could travel at a speed of 11.7 kilometer per second, or more
than 625,000 miles a day, making it possible to make a round trip to Mars in three months, and a trip to Jupiter and
back in a year. Using conventional rocket systems, a round trip to Mars takes about 2.6 years, according to Winglee.
The Mag-beam combines the key features of high-power beam plasma sources along with an earlier concept that
Winglee was developing called Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma propulsion, or M2P2, where spacecrafts would be
encased in a plasma bubble and sail across the galaxy on solar winds. It had several problems, although Winglee
believes they've been resolved with Mag-beam.
"The problem with M2P2 is that you have to tag the solar wind. While it could actually shorten the trip time to Mars,
some of the trajectories indicated that we could do it in 1.6 years. The problem is that it's still a long time in space.
Using the beam system, you no longer have to do the tagging. You can move more directly to the destination," he said.
It's expected that leaving the propulsion systems behind would reduce the cost of building the spacecraft, but experts
say that other factors have to be taken into account.
"It is correct that leaving the propulsion unit behind will make spacecraft lighter and therefore individually cheaper,"
said Chris Welch, a lecturer in astronautics at Kingston University. "However, this will only be the case if a significant
amount of infrastructure is put in. To use a frontier analogy, if current spaceships are horse-drawn carts, then the
system that Winglee is proposing is more akin to a railway, so you have to pay for the rails up front."
Winglee acknowledges that it would take an initial investment of billions of dollars to place stations around the solar
system. But he argues that it could eventually lead to a permanent human presence in space.
"When you are doing costs, you've got to add up the full costs," said Winglee. "Right now, a round trip to Mars using
conventional rocket systems takes about 2.6 years. You have to decide whether the risk on a 2.6-year mission is worth
the value of something that may require some infrastructure that could be reused for multiple missions that only take
90 days. You are not going to be able to have a human permanent presence in space if you are going to be talking
about 2.6-year missions."
Initially Winglee envisions one orbiting station around a planet, but with more frequent trips on a monthly or yearly
basis, two or more stations could be placed around each planet, depending on frequency and safety limits.
Currently the team has a prototype of both the beam emitter and the sail deflector under development. Assuming
constant funding is available, Winglee expects the first test to take place in five years' time. Some experts, though, are
a bit skeptical about the stability of the beam generated.
"I think there are some potential fundamental limitations which have to be looked at first," said Andrew Coates of the
Mullard Space Science Laboratory. "Beams in plasmas create instabilities, and it is possible that the beam coherence
and identity would be destroyed over large distances in a naturally variable solar wind environment. There may also be
problems with beam defocusing and spacecraft charging."
Winglee says that the beam instabilities are being suppressed by the generation of an axial magnetic field. Once out in
space, the plasma stations could also be used as direct propulsion units or to power up spacecrafts and charge their
batteries.
"It would be fearfully expensive to develop," said Welch. "But it could offer a solar-system-wide transportation
infrastructure."
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