VASIMR: Obama's NASA.

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Has nothing to do with the OPs point. This is not an Obama initiative. It's a private company run by a former astronaut who has been doing this work for decades and who may in future fly a small prototype to the ISS. There are advantages and disadvantages to different thrusters and Zubrin is entitled to his opinion. But private thrusters arent his concern, his concern is Mars now! (as always). And the agreement to test it was signed under Bush, not Obama.

The OP is trying to insinuate that VASIMR is a feature or focus of the current exploration program. That is not the case. It may be a far future feature but that's notional stuff, not something that is budgeted as an exploration option. No current NASA reference plans incorporate VASIMR for exploration. That's a fact.

Zubrin is reacting to a comment by the NASA administrator, not the actual budget or policy. But budget is policy. Anything else is just talking and dreaming of what might happen one day.

See my edit. The Obama administration has made the false claim that the VASIMR technology must be developed before a manned mission to Mars can be attempted.

One of the interessing thing of VASMIR is not being the must powerful or more efficient engine, it's being a powerful engine with the isp and delta v of a plasma engine.

I didn't yet watch the video though...

Last edited by Tollorin on 19 Jan 2012, 2:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

That was talked about as one thing that might enable fast travel, along with a list of other things that would enable Mars. But it was never made a research focus of the new tech department, which has been largely defunded anyway. The new director quit. lol.

VASIMR is far far away. It won't be up to Obama to worry about it as an option. His entire space administration (2012 or 2016) will be consumed with building the next capsule and rocket. If he's lucky he'll get commercial crew capsules, two commercial rockets and a few tech developments like fuel depots (unlikely).

Zubrin is attacking some unbudgeted throw away lines from the administrator. I stick to what is really being done.

Chemical propulsion will never get us to Mars.

Yes it can, just barely.

ruveyn

With chemical propulsion we will never get to Mars before the funding is cut off.

You keep changing what you say. There is no technical reason why a chemically powered rocket could not carry humans to Mars.

With unpredictable government funding there is no guarantee of an electrically driven vehicle either.

ruveyn

The concept of Mars in 39 days is the betting mans choice for a real manned mission to Mars. Even if Vasimr is a dud there are plenty of other advanced methods of propulsion to choose from.

Obama has a vested interest in seeing a Man on Mars before he dies because Martin Luther King specifically stated that we need black actors for the TV show Star Trek.

The chemical Apollo program was a dead end and that is the reason why we are not going back to the Moon.

If we really want to get to Mars in the next 30 years it needs to be planned as a one way trip, launching a permanent base on Mars until we can figure out how to get back.

-it might cost a few trillion dollars (1999 dollars), but it could be done.

---lets figure out how to mine asteroids (profitably) first.

If you don't travel fast (which won't happen anytime soon) then you need a lot more radiation research. We know very little about the radiation environment beyond Earth or it's effects on humans. Total exposure experience amounts to a few days on the Apollo missions.

Any way you slice it we need to know more about many things. And there is just no money to do that seriously and develop the new rockets and capsules concurrently. That's the reality of the space program. It's going to be slow going for the next 10 years and probably for much longer.