A future rocket to Mars will likely carry an Irish tricolour on its side because of a UCD graduate's research, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL
IT’S POSSIBLY ONE of the most unexpected places on earth – or in space – to find an Irish flag. But there it is, the tricolour, on a prototype plasma rocket being developed by a US company for express trips to Mars.
Why the national emblem? It is an acknowledgement of research being carried out in Ireland on cooling systems to stop the rocket melting under its operational temperatures of up to one million degrees.
The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (or Vasimr) aims to cut travel time between earth and Mars from a possible two years down to around six weeks each way, explains Daithí de Faoite, a PhD candidate at UCD. He spent six months in Costa Rica as an intern with the Ad Astra Rocket Company, helping them test the first stage of a new-generation rocket that could make long-distance space travel more efficient.
Conventional rockets use up tremendous energy just getting into space, and once there they have little juice to push them along, according to de Faoite.
“Generally for the chemical rockets – say you are going to Mars – they would have one initial burn and then you would go off to Mars at a constant speed,” he says. But Vasimr makes use of plasma, or partially ionised gas generated at high temperatures. Superconducting magnets contain the plasma within the rocket, and it gets released through an exhaust to propel the rocket over long distances. “You would have a small continuous push of about five Newtons all the way to Mars,” says de Faoite.
That is a similar gravity “push” felt by your hand when holding a half kilogram weight. “For the first half of your trip you would be accelerating and then in the middle of your journey you would turn your rocket around and start braking all the way into Mars. With all those little pushes you can get up to much higher speeds than you could with just the one burn.”
Such nudging could get Vasimr to Mars in an estimated 40 days, making manned trips more feasible. But there are probably decades to go before the rocket is ready for a trip to the Red Planet, and in the shorter term the system could be used as a booster for the International Space Station, explains de Faoite.
During his stint in Costa Rica, de Faoite helped kit out the rocket’s test bed with sensors and measured heat loss from the 4m first stage prototype as it fired.
“The plasma exhaust, which is going about 50km per second, flows into a room-sized vacuum chamber, and it glows a neon blue from the UV light coming out of the plasma, it’s fascinating.”
The dataset de Faoite gathered in Costa Rica 18 months ago is now helping him to model more efficient cooling systems for the rocket under the supervision of Dr David Browne and Dr Kenneth Stanton at UCD’s school of electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering.
“Having the right cooling system is one of the key issues to be solved in order for Vasimr to be developed, and we want to come up with the system with the lowest mass possible,” says de Faoite.
“The materials are a big part of it too. It has to withstand about 50,000 Centigrade in the first stage and about a million Centigrade in the second stage. That places a lot of restrictions on the types of materials you can use, and you have to avoid metals in certain areas of the rocket, so you use ceramics. We are developing systems that are right up on the limit of what is possible.”
His contribution along with that of a handful of other students, including James Mulcahy at UCD, means the Irish flag is one of a number painted on the current Vasimr prototype in the company’s Houston headquarters.
So when the time comes for humans to go to Mars, will de Faoite be on board?
“One can only dream,” he says.