NASA: You will go to Mars in 45 days

NASA expects it will take about 500 days for humans to reach the Red Planet, but Canadian engineer  say a laser-based H system could make that journey in just 45 days.

The US space agency plans to send a crew to the Red Planet in the mid-2030s, around the same time China is also planning to land humans on Mars.

Engineers from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, say they have developed a thermal laser propulsion system, in which a laser is used to heat hydrogen fuel. It's directed energy propulsion, using large lasers fired from Earth to deliver power to the photovoltaic arrays on a spacecraft, which generate electricity, and thus propulsion.

The spacecraft accelerates very quickly when near Earth, then races toward Mars over the next month, launching the main craft to land on the Red Planet and returning the rest of the craft to Earth for recycling for the next launch.

Reaching Mars in just six weeks was previously thought possible only with fission-powered rockets, which pose an increased radiological risk.

Speaking to Universe Today, the team behind the study said that this system could allow for rapid transportation within the solar system.

Directed-energy propulsion is also not a new idea, as it recently made headlines with Breakthrough Starshot, a project that aims to use lasers to send tiny optical probes to the nearest star system, Proxima Centauri, at relativistic speeds.

The system uses lasers to propel a spacecraft into deep space, at relative speeds - a fraction of the speed of light - and the more powerful the laser, the faster the spacecraft.

Some research predicts that a 200-pound satellite could be sent to Mars in just three days, and a larger spacecraft would require about a month to six weeks.

The concepts require a laser array with a gigawatt capacity on Earth, which can be launched into space, and directed at a light sail attached to a spacecraft to accelerate it to high speeds - at a fraction of the speed of light.

Emmanuel Doblay, a McGill alumnus and a master's student in aerospace engineering at TU Delft, published a paper suggesting this could be applied to a trip to Mars.

He told Universe Today: 

“The ultimate application of directed energy propulsion would be to propel an optical sail into the stars for real interstellar travel, a possibility that motivated our team conducting this study. We were interested in how the same laser technology could be used for rapid transport in the Solar System, which we hope will be a starting point in the near term. She can prove this technique."

The team's virtual spacecraft requires a 32-foot-diameter, 100-megawatt laser array to be built somewhere on Earth.

This, given the current trend in the development of optical laser technology, would be sufficient to power a spacecraft bound for Mars.

It works by focusing the laser in a hydrogen heating chamber via an inflatable reflector - the hydrogen thruster is exhausted through a nozzle to push it forward.

Interval Double:

 "Our method will use a more intense laser flow onto the spacecraft to heat the propellant directly, similar to a giant steam boiler. This allows the spacecraft to accelerate quickly while still close to Earth, so the laser does not need to be focused far into space."

By reducing time in space, astronauts encounter lower levels of radiation, which could make the journey to Mars and back safer.

All of the new elements will be required to allow the spacecraft to reach Mars within six weeks — well short of the nine months that NASA has predicted.

The problem is that many of these technologies are still in their infancy, and have not been tested in the real world - raising questions about their viability by 2035.

He was skeptical that hydrogen gas could be contained, Douplay told Universe Today

"The laser heating chamber is probably the biggest challenge."

He asks if it can be contained because it is “heated by the laser beam to temperatures above 10,000 K while keeping the room walls cool?” Our models say this is possible, but large-scale experimental testing is not currently possible because we have not We're building after 100 megawatts of lasers are needed."

Professor Andrew Higgins of McGill, who oversaw Doplay's work, said:

"Being able to deliver energy deep in space via lasers would be a disruptive technology for propulsion and power. Our study examined the thermal approach of lasers, which sounds encouraging, but the laser technology itself is a real game-changer."

The results are published in print on arXiv.