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Researcher's NASA grant to float balloon theory on spacecraft propulsion
Tuesday, August 17, 1999
By CAROL SMITH
It may have a 6.8 billion-mile head start, but Voyager I could lose the race to get out of the solar system if Robert Winglee's new spacecraft propulsion system works the way he thinks it will.
Winglee, an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Washington, has just received a $500,000 grant from NASA to continue research on his Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion system, a kind of magnetic balloon that could sail the solar winds and take a spacecraft beyond the bounds of our solar system for the first time in history.
Traveling at 10 times the speed of today's space shuttles, a spacecraft powered by the magnetospheric plasma system could overtake Voyager I, which was launched in 1977, within eight years, Winglee said.
"Space is not empty," he said. "It's filled with very strong winds."
This solar wind, made of protons and electrons, is traveling at between 300 and 800 kilometers per second.
"That's fast enough to get you from Seattle to Washington, D.C., in 10 seconds," he said. "What we're proposing to do is build a magnetic balloon to ride in that solar
wind."
Winglee, working with geophysics Professors George Parks and John Slough, is developing a prototype of the device at the UW's Plasma Physics Laboratory in Redmond.
The device, dubbed M2P2, is built around a plasma chamber about the size of a large pickle jar, said Winglee. When filled with a dense magnetized plasma, or ionized gas, the chamber would "inflate" a magnetic field about 12 miles in diameter around the spacecraft. This magnetic field would interact with the electromagnetic winds whipping off the sun's corona, acting as a kind of sail.
The prospect of interstellar travel has been a long-standing dream for space researchers searching for the secrets of the universe.
Going beyond the solar system would allow scientists to explore the Kuiper Belt, a spawning ground for comets, or sample material from other stars, Winglee said. "We could check for amino acids to see whether there are the basic building blocks for life (beyond the solar system.)"
And it would give researchers quicker access to places closer to home.
"It would cut the time for a trip to Mars by 50 percent," he said.
The power in the solar wind is enough to propel a 300-pound spacecraft at 180,000 mph, or 4.3 million miles a day. By comparison, today's space shuttle travels at a pedestrian 18,000 mph, or 430,000 miles a day.
Voyager I, which has been plugging along for 22 years, travels at twice the speed of the space shuttle, but is still only halfway out of the solar system. It has long since depleted its chemical fuel, and relies now on "gravitational assists" from its encounters with planets, a sort of slingshot approach to maneuvering through space.
Winglee got the idea for the propulsion system from nature itself.
Coronal mass ejections, which are associated with solar flares, are essentially magnetic balloons billowing off the sun's corona, he said.
"I thought if I understood the physics of it well enough, and understood nature well enough, we could tap some of its energy," he said.
Other scientists have contemplated making solar sails from thin sheets of reflective material to harness the light energy of the sun for space travel, he said.
But to work, the material would have to be much thinner than cellophane. Scientists are still looking for a suitable material.
"There is one (type of material) they're hoping to deploy that would produce a sail the size of a football field," Winglee said.
But it would take a sail big enough to cover a circle encompassing the UW and downtown Seattle to achieve speeds comparable to those a plasma propulsion device could achieve.
Winglee said the goal of the project is to produce an economically feasible propulsion device for NASA.
A typical NASA mission costs about $150 million, he said. Adding the M2P2 device to a spacecraft would cost about $1 million, but would save money in the long run because the spacecraft would have to carry less propellant, reducing its launch weight.
The grant, from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, will fund research for two years. If all goes well, the UW's device could be on a mission within five years, he said. "If it works, we'll have some real fun then."
P-I reporter Carol Smith can be reached at 206-448-8070 or carolsmith@seattle-pi.com
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