The NASA aerospace agency estimates that humans need to travel 55 million kilometers to reach the surface of Mars. When using the missiles that exist today, this can take 7-8 months - during this time a lot of trouble can happen to the ship and the crew themselves. Bad scenarios abound, from a banal rocket failure to a conflict among astronauts.
That is why, in 2010, the head of Ad Astra, Franklin Chang-Diaz, announced that conventional rockets would not be able to deliver people to Mars. As a more powerful alternative, his company is building the Vasimr VX-200SS nuclear rocket, which can take astronauts to the Red Planet in just one month. It recently successfully passed 88-hour tests and thus set a new world endurance record for nuclear rocket engines.
Details about the rocket for flights to Mars were shared by Interesting Engineering. Conventional rockets are reported to use up their entire fuel supply in a single controlled explosion during launch. They cannot temporarily stop the use of fuel and are not even able to abruptly change their flight path. There will also be a 10-minute communication delay between the spacecraft and the control center. It turns out that if something terrible happens to the crew, we will have to watch their death with horror - it will be impossible to help them from Earth.
According to Ad Astra, their Vasimr VX-200SS rocket is able to eliminate all these difficulties. The engine installed in it will be able to turn off and on during the entire flight. It will gradually accelerate and reach its peak speed of 54 kilometers per second by 21 days of flight. It turns out that it will be 4 times faster than all space rockets existing today. Thanks to this feature, it will be able to deliver people to Mars in just 1 month instead of 7-8 months. Crew members will be less exposed to cosmic radiation, which is very good - I recently wrote that for the integrity of astronauts, flights in space should be as short as possible. The rocket engine will also allow you to change the route of movement at any time.
The name of the rocket Vasimr is associated with an abbreviation that can be translated as "Electromagnetic Accelerator with Variable Specific Impulse". In short, the engine used in it uses nuclear reactors to heat plasma (obtained from gas under the influence of radio wave antennas) up to two million degrees. The jet stream then exits the rear of the engine, propelling the rocket at speeds up to 197,950 kilometers per hour (54 kilometers per second). I have already talked about how nuclear engines work in this article.
Ad Astra's idea sounds both cool and dangerous. But she already knows roughly how to protect the inhabitants of the Earth and space travelers from the radiation of a nuclear engine. First, the Vasimr rocket will only be activated after being placed into orbit by a conventional launch vehicle. If an explosion occurs during launch, dangerous particles will not be able to reach the earth's surface. And to protect the astronauts, it is planned to use of materials that do not transmit radiation.
Recently, an 88-hour endurance test of the Vasimr rocket was successfully completed at the Ad Astra laboratory in Texas. According to the head of the company, Franklin Chang-Diaz, this is a great success and a reward for many years of testing. It is reported that the hard-working team achieved great results through trial and error, while not even thinking of giving up. For reference, it is worth noting that Franklin Chang-Diaz himself is a famous American physicist and NASA astronaut who made seven space flights and spent a total of 1601 hours in space. He founded Ad Astra after he retired as an astronaut.
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