VASIMR® VX-200SS Plasma Rocket Completes Record 88-Hour High Power Endurance Test

Only 88 hours?

Anyone get sick after the test?

I thought this would end in the one star bin. Thanks for your support and excitement.

please don't share this with elon musk,

he won't be happy,

he is still using carts and wheels to go to space

If it takes 23 days to get to full speed how are they going to slow it down fast enough to make it a 30 day trip?

It should take 23 days to slow it down.

What's your propulsion secret?

How do you hide your rocket from the public I would think it would be big news.

One step closer to real light sabers! *nerd squeal*

Awesome thread... even with the physics handicapped, idiots.

The sun does move in space. Of course we don't notice because the Earth moves with it.

Try being a little more humble instead of insulting people that are rightfully trying to correct your faulty thinking, because you are acting like you have had one too many boosters.

Stop asking perfectly logical questions.

Trust the science and the scientists. If they say 30 days, then that's what it is.

Too bad since CO2 is plant food and the only course of edible carbohydrates

I think Virgin used tire rubber as the solid fuel for their rocket plane.

No problem. The La Palma Volcano is spewing more CO2 than most humans.

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classic space BS.

Guys talks for long time about something, then they show some CGI, not a single image for real thing and boom it just happened. We have plasma rockets, but Elon is still using good old Russian ballistic missiles from 50y ago...


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Probably just a scaled up version of the "XIPS" system that they use to maneuver and boost satellites when their orbit degrades.

Xenon Ionization Propulsion system.

Xenon is heavy and easily ionized.
They accelerate the ions to around 63,000 mph and discharge them out the back. the advantage is you get maximum possible thrust from every gram of fuel. Roughly 10 times the thrust to weight ratio of a chemical propellant.

[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

[link to www.daviddarling.info (secure)]

Last Edited by JustmeTX on 09/22/2021 08:02 PM

I worked with the Russians when this tech first came out in 1990. Loral space was building geo birds, and wanted this tech for station keeping. Back then 1KW was plenty good enough, since the geo birds were power limited anyway. We were still suffering with a 28 VDC bus, finally went to 56 volts to keep the currents down. Did you know that DC currents in a satellite can "torque" the bird? And the copper wires weigh 1/4 at 1/2 the current.

So the Russians had this impossible plasma motor, most of us doubted it even worked. I designed and built the 1st space power supply for this beast. Yes, your very own LasVegasBrad knows all about this thing.

It uses Xenon gas, which is very miraculous stuff. 1st, nice and heavy, so you get plenty of thrust. 2nd, can be stored liquid at room temp at a reasonable 1000 psia. And yes, the birds are kept around room temp using OSR heat reflectors and heat pipes.

Xenon turns to plasma at a reasonable low voltage, about 500 volts to ignite, 300 volt under operation, so the power supply is not so terrible. The real magic the Russians figured out was how to focus the plasma beam using some tricky magnetic fields.

Another fun thing that happens is the ion beam is pure + charge. Like a battery with one terminal. So the ion motor required electron guns to equalize the charge on the bird.

When this prototype was 1st fired up in a huge vac chamber in Fort Collins, everyone had to look and see it. beautiful purple exhaust, going so fast you could only sense the motion from the corner of your eye.

Of course, it must operate in a hard vacuum. So only useful for deep space.

Yes, it uses huge DC power to run. The specific impulse is over 1500, goal 2000? compared to 300 for chemical rockets.

88! That's great!

That was actually really cool.

So all the BS Sci-fi engines we saw in movies, are actually something achievable.

ASTR on the NASDAQ only @ $9.03 a share. Get in on the launchpad before they moon y'all. Give it 5 years for a 10-100x imho.

i wonder if elon musk is considering incorporating a plasma rocket into his mars mission ?

not necessary but would make the journey much faster