http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/rocket-puts-40day-trip-to-red-planet-in-reach-20100227-pa3b.html
Rocket puts 40-day trip to red planet in reach JEAN-LOUIS SANTINI February 28, 2010 A JOURNEY from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days, instead of up to nine months as currently anticipated, says a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a trip to the red planet could be achieved dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, now on track for lift-off after decades of development. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket is quickly becoming a centrepiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration. The space agency, still reeling from a political decision to cancel its Constellation manned lunar program, has called on firms such as Dr Chang-Diaz's Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company to provide technology to power rovers or future manned missions. ''In the early days, NASA support for the project was rather minimal because the agency did not emphasise advanced technologies as much as it's doing now,'' he said. NASA was focused instead on the series of Apollo missions that delivered men to the moon. The 60-year-old Dr Chang-Diaz champions a non-chemical rocket that might eventually power a manned trip to Mars, long the holy grail for Apollonians. His rocket would use electricity to transform a fuel - most likely hydrogen, helium or deuterium - into plasma gas heated to 11 million degrees, which was then channelled into tailpipes by magnetic fields to propel the spacecraft. It would send a shuttle hurtling towards the moon or Mars at ever-faster speeds up to an estimated 55 kilometres a second until the engines were reversed. Dr Chang-Diaz, a veteran of seven shuttle missions, said the rapid acceleration could allow for trips of just 39 days instead of the anticipated round-trip voyage to Mars of three years, including a forced stay of 18 months. Scaled-down models of the VASIMR craft have been built and tested in a vacuum.
