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Revolutionary Space Propulsion Technologies Enable Mars Settlement by Michael James Carr

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Revolutionary Space Propulsion Technologies Enable Mars Settlement by Michael James Carr II. LaRouche’s Fourth Law Revolutionary Space Propulsion Technologies Enable Mars Settlement by Michael James Carr June 1—Perhaps you did not hear in clination to play at building and about it, amid the daily din of fakery testing new ideas was suppressed. and foolery. President Trump has Factories were shut down wholesale. directed NASA to reorganize hu- Children were told to study finance manity around the mission of or law. Engineering and science spreading civilization to the planet schools were left to train millions of Mars and beyond. To make the point foreign students. The primary Amer- that this is not a rhetorical flourish, ican voice of scientific and techno- the President took the opportunity logical progress, Lyndon LaRouche of the collapse of the Mueller coup (along with Krafft Ehricke, a pri- plot, to announce that the first stage mary designer and advocate of the of this process will be accelerated to Moon-Mars Mission) and his Fusion be accomplished by 2024: the land- Energy Foundation, were jailed and ing of people on the Lunar surface. shut down at imperial decree. We A permanent human presence on could go on, but that should be the Moon will be inaugurated by enough to give you the flavor. 2028. Human exploration of Mars To again fly “right side up” will follow, based upon the techni- means not just giving a larger cal capabilities developed in the budget to NASA, but reorganizing process of Lunar development. NASA and the entire economy of First, reorganization entails the United States. The entire Four flipping NASA and America “right Laws of LaRouche must be imple- side up” after 50 years of imperial mented in order to bring the long- looting. For 50 years the rigged suppressed science and engineering debate and accompanying physical talents out from their foxholes back economy policies have cycled back into a dominant role in the economy and forth between radical policies and society. We quickly review of contraction, austerity, financial those Four Laws here: takeover schemes, “inner space,” 1. Return to Glass-Steagall financial bubbles and schemes, separation of legitimate banking counterculture, etc. on the one side; from speculation in order to stop and on the other side, attempts to the speculative looting of the pro- maintain a status quo or “nor- ductive powers of the nation. malcy”—whatever that means. 2. Return to National Banking. In this situation, American sci- 3. Establish a credit system ence, technology, engineering and which makes credit broadly avail- NASA production was left in a miserable To the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Scenes able to designated national projects state. The quintessential American from NASA video “We Go Together.” (such as the Moon-Mars program), 10 End the Rule of Empire: Lyndon LaRouche’s Mission and Ours EIR June 7, 2019 productive enterprises, agriculture and infrastructure. 4. Provide federal funding for the accelerated de- velopment of fusion power subsumed within the devel- opment of a Moon-Mars colonization program. Secondly, spreading civilization to Mars entails in- tegrating the scientific and engineering capabilities of the entire world into this project—emphatically includ- ing the participation of China, Russia, India, Japan, Europe, and many more emerging space programs—as well as private enterprises and universities. This project is not a project which can be accomplished with the ex- isting technical know-how. It requires the revolutionary insights that pop up from unexpected people and places. The good thing about having over 7 billion people in- volved (a much-maligned number!) is that we have a NASA/JPL/Corby Waste rapidly growing pool of smart people! Remember, it is Chemical rocket propulsion and a months-long ballistic the spread of intelligence which has been the imperial trajectory are acceptable for a robotic probe to Mars. Manned target for destruction since long before Socrates was missions require continuously powered acceleration to reduce travel time to days, not months. Shown is an artist’s concept of sentenced to death. an unmanned Phoenix probe landing on Mars. So far, President Trump and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine have done an excellent job of redirect- India plans to launch its first unmanned Lunar lander ing NASA and America towards this Moon-Mars de- in July. (Remember that it was India’s Chandrayaan-1 velopment mission. But this is still a controversial proj- orbiter which discovered massive quantities of water ect. The wailing and gnashing of teeth are heard ice on the Moon). everywhere! This mission will entail the participation Meanwhile the NASA/Boeing Starliner is being of all smart people—including you—in the final de- prepared for its first unmanned test launch to the ISS struction of the British Empire and the realization of the this summer, while the scheduled abort test of the God-given destiny of our civilization. NASA/SpaceX Dragon II project is delayed, pending Because of the magnitude of the transformation re- determination and rectification of the cause of a vehicle quired, the President has set a five-year timeline for the loss due to an explosion in between tests at the Kennedy accomplishment of the first step, putting people once Space Center. again on the Lunar surface. Necessarily, this has forced With that in mind, we spend here some time discuss- a focus upon organizing the means for the immediate ing the biggest technical problem faced by the Moon- accomplishment of that objective. This means that all Mars program: transportation and propulsion. technologies, equipment, facilities required to meet We can probably get much of what we will need, that short-term goal are being put on the front burner. It such as food, water, fuel and some metals from work we means that a focus is being put upon the existing tech- perform upon the Lunar and later Martian regolith, but nologies which will be used to meet the 2024 goal. the equipment, buildings, power, infrastructure, will However, those technologies do not include many entail huge tonnages of imports from Earth. of the cutting-edge technologies which will be required Think of this as you would think about developing to actually turn a Lunar installation into a Lunar settle- an area of virtually barren countryside on Earth. You ment—not to mention the even more stringent require- will need earthmoving (lunar regolith moving) equip- ments for exploring and settling Mars. ment, mining equipment, materials processing equip- NASA just granted the contract to build the first sec- ment, power installations, piping, cabling, etc. Even tion of the Lunar Gateway orbiting transfer station to with super materials and super equipment, the require- Maxar and signed up 6 companies to make proposals ments quickly move into the thousands and then mil- for the 3 major manned Lunar lander components. lions of tons and beyond of equipment. What can we do? NASA has put forward a supplemental budget request We will probably always use chemical rockets for for an additional $1.6 billion funding for the next fiscal various aspects of activities in space; chemical rockets year as this program ramps up. have some very impressive capabilities—such as the June 7, 2019 EIR End the Rule of Empire: Lyndon LaRouche’s Mission and Ours 11 capability. An early model of a magnetic confinement/controlled fusion rocket is in development by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton Satellite Systems (PSS)—assisted with small-scale NASA grants. This first step towards the 1g con- tinuous acceleration goal is a rocket engine called Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) and is based on Princeton’s fifth-generation, field- Princeton Satellite Systems See the Princeton Satellite Systems short video explaining how the Direct Fusion Drive reversed machine, the Princeton works: https://youtu.be/hggqvB5I95I. Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC)-2 reactor. The reactor capability to quickly produce a very large impulse. employs a unique “odd-parity” radio frequency (RF) However it is that precise capability which is also this heating method, producing a steady-state, closed-field technology’s major failing. Chemical rockets quickly configuration with a highly efficient current drive. The burn themselves out. PFRC-2 experimental machine is currently in operation The problem reminds one of the case of the Hare and at PPPL. the Tortoise—or perhaps it might remind you of the The plan is for the PFRC-2 to demonstrate fusion by habits of your cat. To send robotic probes through deep the end of 2020. An actual DFD rocket engine would space with a chemical rocket jolt followed by a months- provide about 10 megawatts of propulsion power (some- long ballistic trajectory is an acceptable plan. To send where in the range of 50 to 100 newtons, or 10 to 20 people into deep space in that manner is not acceptable. pounds of continuous rocket thrust) via emission of fu- Secondarily, while much has been accomplished by sion-produced ions from an electromagnetic rocket miniaturization in satellites and robotic probes, we nozzle. Production of electricity is accomplished using cannot miniaturize people and their life requirements. If a Brayton Cycle generator in the equipment coolant we are to settle the Moon and Mars, we shall require loop. A typical ion exiting the electromagnetic nozzle revolutionary improvements in propulsion technologies. would exit at a speed of about 100 km/second, while an In this article we begin not with the short hops from actual fusion product would leave at 25,000 km/second. planet to orbit—but with the really-long-distance ques- Contrast that to chemical rocket combustion products tions. leaving the engine at around 5 km/second. Instead of a heavy burst of thrust followed by Because this design burns deuterium (2H) and months of “weightless” ballistic trajectory to Mars, we helium-3 (3He) as fuel—allowing all the reaction prod- really need continuously powered acceleration fol- ucts to be magnetically directed out as thrust—this lowed by continuously powered deceleration.
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