Monday, January 19, 2009

Video: Hope Or Hype? Travel To Mars In Just 3 Days?

SpaceToys.com Authentic NASA Toys and Replicas
(Hat Tip: Spaceports)

Although our species has mastered the art of landing rovers upon the Martian surface, we have yet to develop a fast way to transport astronauts from Earth to Mars (assuming we can figure out how to safely land humans upon the crimson soil).

While some "feasible" technology may be able to shorten the overall trip to under 40 days, Moacir L. Ferreira Jr. is proposing that a rocket could potentially do it within 72 hours with the help of his CrossFire Fusor reactor.





(CrossFire Fusor) The CrossFire Fusor relies on magnetic fields for confining radially charged particles and relies on electric fields for trapping longitudinally them. It also relies on electric fields for accelerating the charged particles for reaching great kinetic energy of about 600KeV (7 billion°C) at inexpressive energy consumption.

The CrossFire Fusor is the first nuclear fusion reactor designed for achieving a true three-dimensional confinement plus a three-dimensional charged particles injection, and for having an adequate escape mechanism for the charged products of nuclear fusion thrusting a spacecraft. It also is the first, among the non-neutral plasma reactors, that can confine a plasma in a quasi-neutral state solving the saturation problem.

The CrossFire Fusor also is the first designed for having great flexibility for confining and fusing charged particles comprising positive and negative ions from neutronic and aneutronic fuels. The nuclear fusion fuel can be composed of several light atomic nuclei like hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, in special boron hydrides and helium-3.

The CrossFire Fusor also is the first providing a method for converting energy of charged products from aneutronic nuclear fusion directly to electricity by neutralization process, that can reach an efficiency exceeding 95%, and it is the first to present a power supply system with a concept of multidirectional energy flow.
While the technology itself looks promising, we may not see this type of rocket available until 2020 (as nuclear fusion has yet to be perfected).

Either way, if Ferreira's reactor is not used for interplanetary travel to Mars, it may have a future in keeping the lights on for future settlers of Ganymede, Callisto and beyond.




Want more space geek news? Then subscribe below via email, RSS or twitter for free updates!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Prefer another service? How about via RSS or follow Colony Worlds on Twitter!

3 comments:

  1. I hate to see it Darnell but the guy is a kook. His fusor design is interesting - it copies Farnsworth, more or less - but his rocket analysis and ravings about going FTL is total bollocks. He screws up the rocket equation utterly and his propellant figures are ridiculous. He's as batty as the guys who dreamt up that electron beam rocket.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear qraal,
    How will you proof that it is wrong?
    Saying a lot of bullshits?

    ReplyDelete
  3. The propulsion appears fine. It's using energy equation.
    Tsiolkovsky rocket equation doesn't fit for high specific impulse propellant.

    ReplyDelete

You can either visit the stars or watch them from afar.

But if you choose the former, you'll definitely get a better view.

~Darnell Clayton, 2007

Note: You do not need a Blogger account in order to comment, but you do need to solve the universal puzzle below.