NASA’s Plasma Rocket… and a Problem Posed by Dr. Paul Laviolette
NASA’s Plasma Rocket… and a Problem Posed by Dr. Paul Laviolette
A US company may have the solution to get humans to Mars in just over a month. They have been given a grant by NASA to try and achieve this. The space agency is pinning its hopes on the Vasimr rocket, which aims to reach the Red Planet in a mere 39 days.The interesting thing here is, of course, not only that the idea has been around for quite some time (leading one to suspect that the technology already exists, as do other propulsion systems, such as ion propulsion, already in use by NASA [See Crazy Engineering: Ion Propulsion for the Dawn Mission]), but that if one knows certain books published in the alternative field, the "news" appears not so much as "news" but rather as a controlled release of information. For example, the scientist Dr. Paul LaViollette published a book Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion(available on this website's webstore), in which he details a number of alternative propulsion technologies, one of them, utilizing microwave soliton effect, could be used not only for propulsion but for launch and lift capability. This technology was an idea around in the 1950s, and if LaViollette's are to be creditied, was made to work sometime in the early 1960s. And this is just one of the many ideas for alternative propulsion that he details in his important book.
The Ad Astra Rocket company from Webster, Texas, awarded the contract by NASA, is located just a stone’s throw from the Johnson Space Center. The CEO, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who is a former astronaut and flew on seven space shuttle missions, says the new rocket engine has the potential to be revolutionary.
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