VASIMR Updates

[EarthlingX]

Just a refresher :

http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/News

http://www.canadianmanufacturing.com : Nautel's RF Generator for Ad Astra

By Noelle Stapinsky, Features Editor | May 13, 2010

An Atlantic company that specializes in manufacturing broadcast radio frequency (RF) amplifier technologies is applying its sound wave expertise to develop generators for a plasma propulsion rocket engine.

This may seem like a galactic leap for Nautel, a 40-year-old company with an international reputation for its high power solid-state radio broadcast transmitters, but it’s not. Nautel is applying robust R&D capabilities to expand its technology to diversify into non-communication applications, and this led to a partnership with Webster, Tex.-based Ad Astra Rocket Co. to build RF generators that power a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR VX-200) concept. This pre-warp speed propulsion, invented by Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz, founder of Ad Astra, would cut a lot of time off a typical space jaunt.

 

[James_Bull]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1006/01vasimr/

Much the same regurgitated stuff in this new artical, with the exception of some new quotes from Chang Diaz.