RE: starship-design: Solar Windsurfing: The Fastest-Ever Propulsion (So Far)

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
> [mailto:owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu]On Behalf Of Ben
> Franchuk
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 10:10 AM
> Cc: Starship-Design (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Solar Windsurfing: The Fastest-Ever
> Propulsion (So Far)
>
>
> "L. Parker" wrote:
> { Empty white space }
> Details would be nice here!

Sorry, the original message went out as HTML which is my default setting. I
forgot this list only supports text. For those of you who were not able to
read the HTML message here it is again as text...

Solar Windsurfing: The Fastest-Ever Propulsion

By Robin Lloyd
Science Editor
posted: 10:50 am ET
21 June 2001


A technology that uses a magnetic balloon to sail ionized particles shed by
the Sun could speed humans to the Jovian moons in less than two years and
push a probe past Voyager 1 to become the first spacecraft beyond our Solar
System.


The low-cost Mini-Magnetosphere Plasma Propulsion, or M2P2, propels
spacecraft at speeds far greater than today's chemical and even ion
propulsion systems, and its magnetic-field sail would even protect travelers
from deadly solar and Jovian radiation.

"The technology seeks to do what space does -- deploy a magnetized sail to
travel with the winds," says University of Washington scientist Robert
Winglee, who came up with the idea after 10 years as a geophysicist studying
Earth inside and out to its radiation environment. The Sun is constantly
shedding high-speed particles, called the solar wind, that race out from it
at speeds averaging 800,000 mph (400 km/sec).

If M2P2 were used for a mission to the Jovian moon Europa, it would take
only 1.5 years to arrive. Using conventional chemical propulsion, such a
trip could take 5 years.

Other technologies also are designed to sail the solar wind, but they rely
on a lightweight material that could be penetrated by meteors. Winglee's
magnetic fields would operate unperturbed by meteors.

How it works

The M2P2 sail starts with an eight-inch magnet that creates a tiny magnetic
field. That field is expanded like a balloon by filling it with an inert gas
split into electrons and ionized particles. That superheated gas, called
plasma, then is amped up by a solenoid that acts as a switch to create a
larger magnetic field.

The magnetic "balloon" eventually can inflate around a spacecraft to create
magnetic field lines reaching as far as 25 miles (40 kilometers) across. The
solar wind then "blows" against the large bubble to propel the spacecraft,
with the sail acting like an umbrella braced against a bad storm. Only in
this case, the umbrella loses and the spacecraft can put away up to 4.3
million miles a day.

The system can make a craft travel at speeds 10 times as fast as the space
shuttle, up to 180,000 mph (50 km/sec). At that rate, an M2P2 spacecraft
could catch up with Voyager 1, currently the furthest man-made object in
space at 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometers) from Earth, before it
reaches the edge of the Solar System.

Honors and the new millennium

Winglee was honored this month by Discover Magazine for his aerospace
innovation, along with seven other inventors.

SPACE.com Founder Lou Dobbs introduced Winglee at the ceremony, saying,
"This technology may enable us to establish a permanent presence in space,
something existing technologies will not allow us to do."

There are hopes that M2P2 soon will be used on a couple smaller experiments
or even missions in NASA's New Millennium Program, which focuses on speeding
up space exploration by validating new technologies in flight.

The tech readiness scale

Hoppy Price, manager of solar sail tech development at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, sits on a committee that evaluates technology proposals for New
Millennium missions.

"It's a neat concept," he said of M2P2. "It has a lot of potential but it's
also very early in the research phase."

"Most of the solar sail technologies we are looking at now are at tech
readiness level four, which means we have some laboratory demonstrations of
the technology," he said. M2P2 is at a lower level of readiness for the
moment, he said, although fast development of prototypes and testing could
make it available for use in some of the approaching New Millennium
missions, such as Space Technology 7.