I want to solve the quandary related to space travel, especially to Mars –

• One month trip from Earth to Mars

 

We humans always like to explore the world. It started in Africa thousands of years ago when our ancestors decided to go outside of their known world at that time and walked all over the continent.  Even ocean couldn’t stop us, our ancestors built boats and sailed tremendous distances to reach other continents.  We invented airplanes and reached to all parts of the world in few days, and now I don’t believe there is any area on earth we haven’t explored.   We then landed on Moon, earth’s natural satellite using rockets and spaceships.  We used the same technology to send unmanned spacecrafts, landed Robotic rovers to explore the red planet Mars.  Now what? When will we send human there.  What’s preventing us to reach there?  The distance, and space radiation?  How can we reach there in short time to avoid staying too long in space and avoid boiling our internal organs? When I go to bed, and look up the colorful solar system projected on my ceiling by cheap LED plug-in night light, I wonder how I can design a system which will take us to Mars in few days than few months.

 

I reviewed several propulsion technologies which can speed up the space travel, but did not find one yet to do it without any shortcoming. Some of the promising technologies are –

 

Solar Electric Propulsion System:

Solar electric propulsion takes advantage of magnetism and electricity to push a ship through space. Electricity, generated by the ship’s solar panels, gives a positive electrical charge to atoms inside the chamber. They are pulled by magnetism towards the back of the ship and then pushed by magnetic repulsion out of the ship. (This is like what happens when you hold the same pole of two different magnets close to each other. They repel each other.) This steady stream of atoms going out of the spacecraft gives it the thrust it needs to go forward through space. The problem with electric propulsion is that it generates a little thrust compare to chemical rockets and takes a long time to get to a high speed.

 

The EmDrive:

Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR Ltd) a small UK based company, has demonstrated a remarkable new space propulsion technology. The company has successfully tested both an experimental thruster and a demonstrator engine which use patented microwave technology to convert electrical energy directly into thrust. No propellant is used in the conversion process. Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.

This technology is unique, because it break physics. It converts electrical energy directly into thrust, which should not be possible, and it breaks Newton’s third law of physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We may need to revise our tests or our laws of physics. They can only lift an eyelash. How can we get it to lift a spaceship?

This technology does not produce enough thrust per kw of energy. Because of this, there are far more efficient ways to lift a spacecraft. But there is one advantage of an EM drive, and that is that no fuel is needed, unlike other propulsion systems that use electricity.

 

Second Generation Engines

The potential for improvement in mission performance by using first generation microwave engines can be seen to be very significant. However the introduction of superconducting technology in second generation engines will present quite remarkable possibilities. At present, superconducting microwave cavities are restricted to high energy physics applications.

This technology allows much more efficient processors, and when solar power is nearly nonexistent in deep space – billions of miles away from the sun, this technology will have uttermost importance. This tech will allow for solar powered spacecrafts to go much farther from the sun – as they will require far less energy.

 

My Idea: OmDrive – A Laser Propulsion System

There are few other notable propulsion techniques, but I believe that combination of some of these technologies, and innovative ideas may help build realistic system to provide enough thrust in space to reach the maximum speed in minimum time.   One of the ideas I have is to use the Laser to beam up power to the spacecraft for the EmDrive.  I call this the OmDrive Laser Propulsion system, which I will elaborate soon.