Photon Thrusters are GO: Let’s Go to MARS!
For the longest time, people have wanted to go to Mars. I guess the moon just wasn’t enough, or maybe War of the Worlds got us all worked up, so now everybody has a grudge against our red sister planet?
Regardless of our violent tendencies, we’ve figured out the secret to space travel is stability. If your engines are shaky or easily influenced by their own output, thereby making them dangerous, you’re not going to get very far without exploding.
And yet, we still had to get to Mars…Only trouble was, it would take six long, boring months to get there.
So we came up with this lovely idea called “photon thrusters.”
An idiot’s guide on photon thrusters, while probably never entering publication, would explain this unique propulsion system as contained energy transformed into a photon beam (like a frickin’ laser) and pointed in the opposite direction that you want to go.
Only problem is that, with all the contained mirrors and vibration of the engine itself, there were issues that a standard photon propulsion system just wouldn’t be able to maintain stability in a rocket. Right now, PPS’s are used for space walks, but those are rather small, contained packs, and therefore are easier to maintain and manipulate.
So enter Dr. Young Bae, a guy who owns a school apparently, because he works at the Bae Institute. This guy came up with a Photonic Laser Thruster that produces enough energy to get us to Mars in roughly a week, and won’t get us blown up in the process.
I think that’s great. The not-blowing-up thing. And the Mars thing, too.
What I like best about this, though, is that it shows independent research is still good for something besides ED drugs and fake cloning procedures. NASA is giving this guy some serious money now, and with it, who knows what he can do? If he can get us to Mars faster than that girl from The Ring can kill you, I say he’s got something there.
Thanks for the information on the photon thruster. As a confirmed trekkie and life-long space-nerd, I cant tell you how depressed I am about the current state of manned space exploration. The Space station exists to give the space shuttle somewhere to go, and the shuttle exists to give us a way to get to the space station. If we had continued in a logical fashion from Apollo, we would already have been to mars a long time ago. It’s obvious that we need a whole new paradigm to get things back on track, and so I always have my ears perked up for things like the photon thruster that have the potential to change the fundamentals of space exploration. The other thing that a lot of people havent heard about is the idea of a “Space Elevator”. Apparently, the load-bearing properties of carbon nano-tubes make this actually feasible. If the space elevator can solve the cost-to-weight ratio problems associated with chemical-based rockets, and the photon thruster can get us to mars in a week, then maybe there is hope after all for a human future in space. Just out of curiosity- how quickly would a photon thruster be able to get us to alpha-centauri? Really, really great stuff. Thanks so much for sharing this. Warp factor 9, Mr. Sulu!
- Ty