Date: April 8, 2010
Title: Making the VASIMR Engine
Podcaster: Sawyer Rosenstein and Montserrat Cordero
Organization: Young Astronomers – http://ya.astroleague.org/
Description: Sawyer Rosenstein (@thenasaman) and Montserrat Cordero (@montsecor) interview Jorge Oguilve-Araya who works for AdAstra and has been aiding in the design and creation of their space-only plasma engine called VASIMR. Listen and learn about this futuristic technology which may be coming in the not-to-distant future.
Bio: Both Sawyer and Montserrat are considered “Young Astronomers”, teens under the age of 18 who enjoy all things regarding space and astronomy, and are both editors for said group. Both are on Twitter at @thenasaman for Sawyer and @Montsecor for Montserrat. All of their space-related devotion is done after going to school full-time.
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Transcript:
Montse: Hello, my name is Montserrat Cordero, I’m known in the twitterverse as @Montsecor. I’m joined today by Sawyer Rosenstein, known as @thenasaman. Hello Sawyer!
Sawyer: Hi!
Montse: We’re proud to be joined today by the engineering director of AdAstra, Mr. Jorge Oguílve. What do you exactly do at AdAstra?
Jorge: My position is called director of operations in the laboratory. Basically I’m in charge of a lot of milestones in the project, overseeing the work of engineers, and technicians that work with me in this project. Keeping track of the schedules, keeping track of delivering what we said we were gonna deliver, doing experimental work, doing reports of that experimental work, implementing new systems like new machines into the facility. Basically a coordinating role here in AdAstra.
Sawyer: Ok, so… What exactly is the project you are working on at AdAstra?
Jorge: I’m just going to assume that you haven’t heard about our project before, but basically, our project, we are developing a new rocket engine, a new rocket engine that is called the VASIMR. VASIMR stands for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, translated, that means that we are developing a rocket in which you can change the thrust of the rocket, based on the needs that you have, the propulsion needs, you have. Sometimes you want high thrust, sometimes you want, not so much thrust, but more efficiency in your system, for example. So our rocket basically is like a car in which you can switch gears. Our webpage, we have a webpage, which is www.adastrarocket.com and, we have a lot of information there, just in case you want to expand a little bit in our system. How the rocket works? At the current time, we have the chemical rockets, they use some kind of chemicals that basically burn, and they work on the principle of action and reaction, basically that’s what we got now. Our plasma rocket works by using a gas, we inject a gas into the rocket, and then we have radio frequency waves that add energy to that gas, and change that gas from gas state to a plasma state, so you ionize the gas, and the you get a plasma, and one of the features of the plasma is that it is really hot, so we need a way to confine that plasma, ‘cause it will otherwise melt all the materials that are around, and we do that by using magnets, superconducting magnets in our case. We put several magnets side to side in order to make a specific configuration, and then the magnetic field lines will give the direction top the plasma and will confine the plasma so we have ions going out or traveling to the back of the rocket at a really high speed and we create a thrust by doing that.
Sawyer: What do you intend to use VASIMR for in the future?
Jorge: Well… It has a lot of applications for example, we’re gonna have an application that will be to test the VASIMR rocket on the International Space Station. It turns out that the Space Station is on micro-gravity conditions. The Space Station has to be reboosted in periods by using rockets or thrusters ‘cause otherwise in the long run it will fall back to Earth. So one application is using the VASIMR for reebosting the Station so it keeps the same orbit and it doesn’t fall to Earth. That’s one application, but there are also private companies that are building private Stations in Space, like Bigelow Aerospace, that’s one example, but any other company that builds stations there will need to be reboosted, the platform has to be reboosted, so we can use the VASIMR for that. We can use the VASIMR for sending cargo to the moon. We can use the VASIMR for changing the orbit of satellites. You can use the VASIMIR to, for example, sending space waste, or debris to clear orbits, maybe send that to the sun and have that waste burn. You can use the VASIMR for space travel, like going to Mars, because you can do that trip, instead of in 10 months do it in 39 days, so it’s a big reduction in time.
Sawyer: When do you expect to see VASIMR actually being used on a rocket or on a space station of some sort?
Jorge: We hope to see it in the station in a couple of years.
Montse: I wanted to ask you ‘cause I’ve heard a lot of people asking, why VASIMR can’t be used on Earth? ‘Cause I’ve had many people asking why is it just for space? Or why don’t you start, like, launching stuff here? Or…
Jorge: What happens is that the current rocket technology is really good for taking things out of Earth, to the Low Earth Orbit. They will continue working and they will continue to exists ‘cause they are necessary to take things out of the Earth into the Earth orbit, but they are not really god for space travel, as I mentioned. The VASIMR is the opposite, the VASIMR produces little thrust, let’s say, for keeping the Station, maybe 1 Newton. So with one Newton, which is a little force, on Earth you’re not gonna launch anything with that force, but in space, it’s a different story, because you are in micro-gravity conditions and if you can have that thrust for a long time, a spacecraft, what a spacecraft will do is start, and go, and accelerate a little, slowly at the beginning but then it starts to gain speed, and more speed, and more speed, because you have one Newton, but it’s continuous, so, when you realize, you are traveling at tremendous speeds. But on Earth it doesn’t work, because the plasma, if you try to fire the rocket in the atmosphere, once the plasma is going out, the ions will crash into all the molecules out there and everything we have in the atmosphere, so they won’t be able to do any useful thrust at all. You need a vacuum for the rocket to operate.
Montse: Umm, ok… Thanks a lot for joining us. Pleasure being here. If people wanna keep up with you and the project where can they go, is there a webpage? Or…
Jorge: in our webpage you’ll find some email addresses, for people to write, to do questions, at the present time we are working on a Frequently Asked Questions section, in our webpage, it will be up in some time… so if you have more questions, we will answer them and we will take advantage of your questions, maybe, to include them into the frequently asked questions if we have several people asking the same, but you can just contact us through the webpage.
Montse: Thanks a lot for joining us here.
Jorge: Ok
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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