The VX-200, the prototype for the VASIMR (propulsion plasma engine) that Costa Rican astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz sketched three decades ago; is in the vacuum chamber in the laboratory. This engine was created to realize space voyages faster and cheaper, and to explore further places.This experiment comes after 4 years of having created the two laboratories Ad Astra Rocket (Texas, US and Guanacaste, Costa Rica) with the main goal of launching the plasma engine to space.
VX-200 at Ad Astra Rocket's laboratories
If the last test is achieved, everything is clear to continue building the engine to be proved in flight.
The first step will be to start the engine make it work first at low power and then to the highest at 200 kilowatts. During the first hours in the morning, there will be a process of cooling the superconductor magnet. This process will take 3 days to get to the lowest temperature of 5º Kelvin (-268º Celsius).
The VX-200, the prototype for the VASIMR (propulsion plasma engine)
The superconductor magnet is the main part of the engine. It creates a magnetic field capable of becoming the hottest plasma recipient with more than 50,000º Celsius; with this the powerful acceleration is created.
Propulsion
The basic principles of rocket propulsion stem from Newton's 3rd law of motion. The so-called law of action and reaction. A rocket propels itself by expelling material at high velocity, in the opposite direction to its motion. The material is usually a gas and the heat of a chemical reaction generally imparts the velocity. The heat builds pressure in a combustion chamber and is converted to exhaust velocity by the action of a properly designed nozzle. The principle is quite general and applies equally well to the motion of a simple garden sprinkler as it does to the powerful engines of the space shuttle.
Aplying Newton's 3rd law
