NASA’s ‘Photonic Propulsion’ To Cut Journey To Mars To THREE Days!

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NASA’s ‘Photonic Propulsion’ To Cut Journey To Mars To THREE Days!

Growing up during the 1980’s, I honestly believed that by the time I reached 40 years old we would be living at a time where we were out exploring the deepest reaches of the universe and colonising far off worlds as we finally realised our place our in the Universe.

Yet, here we are in 2016 and the best we have is the ISS and the odd probe that may or may not make it to wherever we are told it was meant to be going.

However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel, if you pardon the pun.

New technology that harnesses the power of light is being invented so that one day soon, we could see the journey time of a trip to Mars cut down to a matter of days.

‘Photonic Propulsion’, it is hoped, will be able to accelerate probes, and eventually larger spacecrafts, to relativistic speeds and take us to the nearest stars, and beyond.

The man leading the team of researchers into this new propulsion technology is Professor Phillip Lubin from the University of California Santa Barbara.

Photonic propulsion, as it is properly known, is a theoretical system that would use particles of light to propel objects through space. Though particles of light have no mass, they do have energy and momentum — and it’s this energy that, when reflected off an object, is transferred into a push.

With a large, reflective sail, Lubin suggests, it would be “possible to generate enough momentum to accelerate a spacecraft” via lasers pulsing light from the surface of the Earth. This could, he says, get a “100 kilogram robotic craft to Mars in three days”. A craft occupied by humans would take slightly longer — but at a month, it would still be significantly shorter than current transit estimates.

The Daily Mail reports…

A relativistic speed is a speed which is a significant proportion of the speed of light.

‘We know how to get to relativistic speeds in the lab, we do it all the time,’ said Lubin at Nasa’s National Innovative Advanced Concepts (Niac) symposium.

‘When we go to the macroscopic level, things like aircraft, cars, spacecraft, were pathetically slow.’

Professor Lubin is aiming to bridge the gap between the small and the large, using photonic propulsion technology.  

The theory is simple; thrust from photons emitted from a laser array could be used to propel a spacecraft.

All spacecrafts operate by firing their propellant in the opposite direction to the way they want to travel.

Traditionally this propellant is fuel and has to be carried on board the spacecraft, making it heavier and slowing it down.

Photonic propulsion uses an array of lasers instead, which adds no mass to the spacecraft other than the laser itself.

This enables it to accelerate for longer and reach higher speeds.

In theory, this should help get aircraft to relativistic speeds.

Professor Lubin didn’t specify what proportion of the speed of light the technology would reach, although he did say it could be up to a quarter.

The launch into orbit would also be slower at the start and during the descent, for example.

As a result, the professor said: ‘We could propel a 100kg aircraft to Mars in a few days. In comparison it would take a shuttle roughly a month to get there,’ the researchers said.

Professor Lubin was making reference to Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) shuttle.

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This really would be a game changer! Think of the current technology adopted to take us into space.

Our best and brighest that make it to be astronauts are literally strapped to a semi-controlled Weapon Of Mass Destruction!

The rockets we use now are to heavy, not to mention dangerous, and at best can escape us from the atmosphere of earth, but thats about it.

Its 2016 and we surely need to be rethinking this, and fast.

THE ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ FUEL-FREE EM DRIVE

In addition to the ‘photonic propulsion’ option, NASA are also working on something that is deemed the ‘impossible’ fuel free EMDrive. This uses microwaves and bounces them around in a chamber and is powered by solar power.

The EMDrive, when first proposed, was laughed at due to the fact it would have to break the laws of physics for it to work…. but it does!

The fact it is fuel-free also suggests that the drive may contradict the law of conservation of momenum.

The drive would produce a forward facing force, yet it WOULDNT produce an opposite and equal reacion of force in the other direction.

Digital Trends reports…

Engineer Roger Shawyer’s controversial EmDrive thruster jets back into relevancy this week, as a team of researchers at NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on the seemingly impossible tech. Though no official peer-reviewed lab paper has been published yet, and NASA institutes strict press release restrictions on the Eagleworks lab these days, engineer Paul March took to the NASA Spaceflight forum to explain the group’s findings. In essence, by utilizing an improved experimental procedure, the team managed to mitigate some of the errors from prior tests — yet still found signals of unexplained thrust.

Isaac Newton should be sweating.

Flying in the face of traditional laws of physics, the EmDrive makes use of a magnetron and microwaves to create a propellant-less propulsion system. By pushing microwaves into a closed, truncated cone and back towards the small end of said cone, the drive creates the momentum and force necessary to propel a craft forward. Because the system is a reaction-less drive, it goes against humankind’s fundamental comprehension of physics, hence its controversial nature.

On the NASA spaceflight forums, March revealed as much as he could about the advancements that have been made with EmDrive and its relative technology. After apologizing for not having the ability to share pictures or the supporting data from a peer-reviewed lab paper, he starts by explaining (as straightforward as rocket science can get) that the Eagleworks lab successfully built and installed a 2nd generation magnetic damper which helps reduce stray magnetic fields in a vacuum chamber. The addition reduced magnetic fields by an order of magnitude inside the chamber, and also decreased Lorentz force interactions.

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Exciting times for the space program. The space program that we, the general public, are aware of, but is that the only game in town?

If you have listened to any of my work or read any of my space related articles then you will already be aware that im in the camp that believes there is a two-tier space program.

We are used the public face of NASA, and more recently their European counterparts at ESA, yet could it be there is another program running away from public attention.

Just where do the billions poured into NASA etc really go to?

It could be that we are merely being introduced to technology that is already outdated in the other occulted space program and they are handing it down for the “children” to play about with.

One can only imagine the types of technology in the ‘secret space program’. On second thoughts, we are so far behind them that perhaps we are unable to even comprehend the type of tech-toys these cats are playing with!

Since we are talking secret space, lets have another listen to the whistleblower Randy Kramer talking about his time as part of something called The M.D.F – The Mars Defence Force

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