In the Star Wars and Star Trek movie, we have never seen even once a spacecraft is powered by a rocket. But, we always see the single rudder shuttle (small spacecraft) can take off from a planet and up to space then travel to another solar system. We have seen that, they moved without a rocket power. Even though it is only a movie, but now some time ago, the researchers from NASA discovered the new method of space shuttle thrusters that is not use a rocket power. It was named M2P2 (Mini Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion). But, by the common understanding of the Physics Laws, the light speed shuttle as in the Movie, still can’t be discovered. Even though the thruster can’t reach the light speed as in the Star Wars and Star Trek movie, but for now the some fiction shuttles can be discovered by M2P2 technology.
The M2P2 can impute a shuttle even up to 10 times the common spacecraft in the world. The common spacecraft can move by 18 000 miles per hour or 430 000 miles per day, but a shuttle that is powered by M2P2 can move up to 180 000 miles per hour or 4.3 million miles per day. We know that the Voyager 1, a launched shuttle in 1977, is now 6.8 miles from Earth and still within our solar system. It needs 22 years to take that position. But, if we launch a shuttle that is power by M2P2, it could reach Voyager 1 in 8 years.
Robert Winglee, an Associate Professor of geophysics in University of Washington (UW), has been working on M2P2 for nine months together with geophysics professors George Parks and John Slough, a research Lectureship in aeronautics and astronautics. They developed a prototype and setting up testing in Redmond Plasma Physics Laboratory of UW. Their system will use plasma in a chamber 10 x 10 inch size, which is attached to a plane. Solar cells and solenoid coils will energize magnetically by creating high density of magnetized plasma, or ion gas, which will catapult an electromagnetic field as far as a radius of 10-12 miles around the spacecraft. The magnetic field will interact with the solar wind so that the thrust appearance. The making of magnetic field is similar with the sliding giant sunscreens that will be driven by solar wind to move at speeds up to 780 000 miles until 1.8 million miles per hour. In other hand, the M2P2 plasma tube is much lighter and slimmer than a giant sunscreen, so the cost of space mission could be saved and we will easily accessing to other planets, although the plasma tools are very expensive.
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