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Lunar Run
Ride along on an unmanned lunar cargo trip with the VASIMR plasma rocket developed by Ad Astra, a company founded by former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz.
The silent video starts with an animation of the VX-200 experimental rocket in the company‘s vacuum chamber, and compares the VASIMR with a chemical rocket.
A future operational VASIMR is then shown launched into low Earth orbit on a traditional, chemically powered rocket. A second launcher delivers another, heaver load consisting of fuel, cargo, and a lunar lander. These link up in orbit with VASIMR, which then switches on and burns argon for four months. The spacecraft slowly accelerates, spiraling out of Earth’s gravitational field and off to the moon. The plasma rocket delivers 75 tons of cargo, whereas a traditional chemical rocket, though faster, arrives at the moon with just 35 tons.
(10:53)
Video: Ad Astra
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Comments (3)
Was there any sound for this video?
Posted by -Hwy101 on May 4,2011 | 04:11 AM
This is more like what I envisioned our civil space program being like all thru my life- massive cargoes going to faraway destinations enabling more space development and eventually, settlement. Not the piecemeal, jerked-around, constantly changing policy target on again off again destinationally challenged mess we have now. Go Ad Astra ! Go Space X ! Go Sierra Nevada ! Go Space !
Posted by Perry A. Noriega on May 4,2011 | 06:52 PM
This is why you use a nuclear reactor. A nuclear powered Vasimr would be far more powerful.
Posted by Robbie on August 8,2012 | 02:29 AM