Superconducting magnetic TPS

[kelvinzero]

Another possibility is beamed power propulsion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion

That might give you the sort of power you need. It probably wouldnt be a plasma or ion drive in the usual sense though. I imagine you would concentrate some of the power to create the plasma and it is actually the explosive expansion that drives the craft. The ideas discussed here could be an improvement on simply ablating away part of your craft perhaps.

 

[grokme]

Seems like one of the biggest challenges would be blocked radio signals. How would you overcome that?

 

[rocketman5000]

For a TPS it would be handled the same way they handle radio signals today. They beam the radio signal back to an orbiting satelite and then back to earth. The plasma "wave" is only in front of you.

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.newscientist.com: Shields up! Force fields could protect Mars missions (video)

28 July 2010

by Marcus Chown

BORED on their six-month journey to Mars? Not a bit of it. Whenever the astronauts look out of the window, they find themselves mesmerised by the glowing, shimmering sphere of plasma that surrounds their spacecraft. Hard to believe that the modest electromagnet at the heart of their ship can produce something so beautiful.

Not that the magnet's raison d'être is aesthetic, of course. Its main function is to keep the astronauts from a slow, horrible death by radiation sickness.

NASA is nervous about sending astronauts to Mars - and understandably so. Six months' exposure to the wind of high-energy particles streaming from the sun could indeed prove deadly. But a team of researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford, UK, has hit upon a phenomenon that might just solve the problem. They have shown that a magnet no wider than your thumb can deflect a stream of charged particles like those in the solar wind. It gives new life to an old idea about shielding spacecraft, and might just usher in a new era of space travel. "Space radiation has been called the only showstopper for the crewed exploration of space," says Ruth Bamford of RAL. "Our experiment demonstrates there may be a way the show can go on."