Seeker Blog

I think if you want to go to the moon, you might as well start thinking about packing your bags, because it’s going to happen very soon.

MIT Technology Review interviews rocket scientist Franklin Chang Diaz

This coming January, Ad Astra Rocket Company will test the VX-200, a full-scale ground prototype of the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMIR), first conceived in 1979 by the company’s president and CEO, astronaut and plasma physicist Franklin Chang Diaz. The rocket is an attempt to improve on current space-propulsion technologies, and it would use hot plasma, heated by radio waves and controlled by a magnetic field, for propulsion. Chang Diaz believes that the system would allow rockets to travel through space at higher speeds, with greater fuel efficiency.

If the prototype demonstrates sufficient efficiency, thrust, and specific impulse on the ground, the next step will be the VF-200, a flight version of the rocket. Ad Astra plans to fly the VF-200 to the International Space Station, where it would help maintain the space station’s orbit. If all this goes according to plan, Chang Diaz hopes to eventually build VASIMIRs that could travel to Mars and beyond. In advance of his appearance at the Emerging Technologies Conference this week, Technology Review talked with him about the near future of space exploration…

<more>

Technorati Tags: Space Flight