VASIMR station booster

Franklin Chang Diaz is proposing to NASA that they use two small VASIMR engines for reboosting the ISS. (The engines would using the station's solar generated power.): NASA could buy plasma engine for station reboost services - Flight Int.

Posted 03/09/10 | 16:34:29 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Exotic Transport

Comments

This sounds like a great idea to me. It has got to be cheaper to reboost with VASIMR, but I thought the ISS felt three pounds of drag not two. I would say move the space station into an earth-moon cycler orbit at some point, or L5. Xenon is very expensive, argon or nitrogen would be cheaper fuels. But getting any fuel to LEO is still going to be expensive. If they already have enough waste hydrogen gas developed on the ISS that would be the way to go. The Space Station is flying thru three billionths of a psi of atomic oxygen. So why not make a VASIMR that runs on a variety of gasses including oxygen? Chang-Diaz responded that trying to use highly corrosive oxygen is not a good idea with the current design. Recent work at MIT has mentioned that they have an ion rocket that runs on nitrogen. MIT has also done research on a new way to produce electricity with carbon nanotubes and heat. Maybe these carbon nanotubes can be used to make a new type of ion rocket engine?? Maybe even one that can tolerate oxygen as a fuel?

Posted by Tony Rusi at 03/09/10 20:36:14

"I would say move the space station into an earth-moon cycler orbit at some point, or L5."

Access? Re-supply? With...what?

"The Space Station is flying thru three billionths of a psi of atomic oxygen."

Okay, but just because it's there, doesn't mean you can easily collect enough of it and use it (I'm having visions of a *very* poor man's Bussard Ramjet).

"Maybe these carbon nanotubes can be used to make a new type of ion rocket engine?? Maybe even one that can tolerate oxygen as a fuel?"

Carbon nanotubes and atomic oxygen? Uh, this is not sounding good...

Posted by Frank Glover at 03/10/10 03:07:55

A newbie I presume.

Posted by Tom D at 03/10/10 12:17:26

Newbies get to throw out ideas to see if anything sticks; don't denigrate the 'newbie'. I like the idea of a 'poor man's Bussard Ramjet', even if "very", not as a way to reboost ISS but as a futur experiment if only to gain experience with using magnetic fields for such.

Posted by Dean at 03/10/10 12:22:14

Using VASIMR to reboost ISS does sound very useful. This would be a great way to prove it out and wring out the bugs. On the other hand I can think of a few potential problems:

1) Will it mess up the microgravity research environment? Presumably, VASIMR would thrust for months, maybe even continuously.

2) Is there enough available power (~200 kW) for extended thrusting?

3) What will this do to the charge environment around ISS? Will this overpower the charge neutralizers (BCAs I believe).

Overall, using ISS to prove out new technologies for spaceflight sounds like a great idea. I'd really like to see tethers used for reboosting too.

Posted by Tom D at 03/10/10 12:37:01

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