Innovative Propulsion]

Dennis May wrote,

"The small probe which will use solar plasma
pressure interacting with its own artificially
created plasma halo.
"

See http://spike.geophys.washington.edu/Space/SpaceModel/M2P2/ for a
desciption of Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2). M2P2 would
achieve the same sort of thing that Zubrin's magsail would, but without
the huge loop and need for high-Tc superconductivity that magsailing does.

M2P2 is definitely exciting. It seems to me to be the perfect candidate
for NASA's "faster,better,cheaper" approach. Just eject a tiny,
heavily-instrumented engineering probe from Earth's orbit with a Delta II
(or a yet even smaller booster) and see whether the M2P2 concept can work.
Call it "Deep Space 3".

Ron

Monart Pon monart@...
11/15/01 03:18 PM

spacesettlers@...

From Dennis May:

Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 11:37:15 -0600

I remember reading some year and a half ago that
NASA was funding SBIR [Small Business Innovative
Research] Grants for innovative space propulsion
systems. I haven't heard any follow-up on how
things are going or what systems received awards.
Has anyone heard anything?

Some which might be getting such money include:

The pulsed laser driven spinning mirrored top which
rides atop the beam on plasma "pops".

The small probe which will use solar plasma
pressure interacting with its own artificially
created plasma halo.

I used to evaluate SBIR proposals for the Air
Force but not in this area. The NASA search
for proposals seemed pretty far outside the
original SBIR intent, since innovative propulsion
systems for $50,000 seems like asking a
Lamborghini dealer to take $5 down and $5 a
month.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/ is one of the
sites discussing this topic.

Dennis May