Rocket
Project Takes-Off in
Costa Rica
Costa Rica's first
rocket technologies
laboratory has been
built and masterminded
by 57 year-old Costa
Rican and former NASA
astronaut Franklin
Chang-Diaz, launching a
private venture to build
a plasma-powered rocket
engine capable of
sending a shuttle into
space cheaper and
quicker than
conventional models.
The us$3.5 million lab,
funded mostly by Costa
Rican investors, has
been built in Guanacaste
and Chang-Diaz hopes to
put hydrogen or argon
fueled plasma-powered
rockets into space by
2010 and see them fly to
Mars by 2025. It is
hoped that the lab will
form the basis of a
high-tech research
centre and the Silicon
Valley of Costa Rica,
bringing jobs and an
improved financial
position to the area.
Chang-Diaz clearly sees
his country as a land of
opportunity as he
comments, "I think this
is a country small
enough that it can be
changed. It's not as
difficult as changing
the United States or the
Soviet Union."
The proposed
plasma-powered engine
relies on heat generated
by a nuclear reactor and
this heat expands a gas,
likely to be hydrogen or
argon, into plasma which
is essentially a hot
cloud of subatomic
particles, protons and
electrons. An electrical
field and magnets would
accelerate the chemical
reaction and direct the
plasma, just as thrust
is directed from a
conventional rocket
engine.
The craft would launch
from the earth with
conventional rockets,
activating and using its
innovative engines for
interplanetary travel.
The technology could
also be put to many uses
in space and on Earth,
including breaking toxic
waste down into harmless
molecules.
NASA successfully
flight-tested a
solar-powered version of
a plasma propulsion
engine almost 10 years
ago in 1998, using xenon
rather than hydrogen
fuel. NASA's Dawn
mission, scheduled for
launch in September,
will also rely on a
similar propulsion
technology, though the
much more capable Vasimr
plasma engine proposed
by Chang-Diaz could
reduce the travel time
for a human mission to
Mars to just 4 months.
Traditional chemical
rockets can take between
6-10 months in
comparison.
Kelly Humphries, a
spokesperson for NASA's
exploration systems
directorate, commented,
"Anything we could do to
cut the travel time to a
distant destination like
Mars would be very
important."
Science education and
technology in Costa Rica
is far behind that of
the US, but at the new
lab the team are
fine-tuning a
plasma-powered model
that will undergo
testing at Houston's
Johnson Space Centre by
the end of 2007. |
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