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CNN Live At Daybreak
NASA Physicist Inventing Way to Shorten Trip to Mars by Half
Aired July 17, 2001 - 07:48 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien has been on Devon Island, in Canada's Northwest Territories, all this week. The landscape there is similar to what it's like on the Red Planet, and some scientists are trying to simulate conditions there.
But what about getting to Mars without taking months and months of travel?
Miles talked with one scientist who believes he's actually got the answer.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are no shortcuts in the elusive quest for a quick trip to Mars.
CHANG DIAZ: Yes, they are coming through the piping system right here.
O'BRIEN (on camera): Yes, yes.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): In Houston, six-time astronaut and physicist Franklin Chang Diaz showed me his souped-up power plan that, in theory, could trim the one-way trip to Mars in half, to about three months.
FRANKLIN CHANG DIAZ, NASA ASTRONAUT/PHYSICIST: We want to go to Mars quickly because if we take too long in getting there, then the humans will become deconditioned, and by the time they get to Mars, they will not be very useful workers.
O'BRIEN: Chang Diaz's rocket engine works by making super-hot gas or plasma.
CHANG DIAZ: It makes plasma by heating a gas pretty much the same way you heat food in a microwave oven.
O'BRIEN: A microwave with some real attitude, able to heat gas to nearly 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
CHANG DIAZ: Which for us is rather cold.
O'BRIEN: I suppose it's all relative. In any case, sent down the chute with the help of some magnets, the plasma engine spits out thrust that is relatively puny, no more than a few hundred pounds. If the shuttle were a fire hose, this would be a dripping faucet.
CHANG DIAZ: This process continues. It stays on all the time.
O'BRIEN (on camera): Of course, since you're in a vacuum, if it stays on all the time, you're continuously accelerating?
CHANG DIAZ: Nothing slows you down, so you're continuously accelerating.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): To generate enough heat to make plasma, his Mars ship would be equipped with a small nuclear reactor. It may sound risky, but Chang Diaz wouldn't leave home for Mars without one.
CHANG DIAZ: We cannot afford to send human beings out there so far away in a very limited power mission, because we are sure to come down with some problems that we are going to have to deal with.
O'BRIEN: Miles O'Brien, CNN, Devon Island, the Canadian high Arctic.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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