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The rocket engine that could transform space travel - POLITICO

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2021-07-17 17:00:09

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‘TOTAL TRANSFORMATION’: That’s what rocket company Ad Astra is ultimately hoping to achieve in deep space travel as it continues to test-fire its VASIMR plasma engine into the weekend — with the goal of reaching a 100 hours set by NASA.

“This is electric propulsion taken to a new level of power,” the company’s CEO, Franklin Chang-Diaz, told us on Thursday from Houston. “We’ve been after that goal for many years now. Assuming everything stays all together, the rocket seems to be comfortable and all the temperatures stable. Everything seems to be working out. It’s a big deal for us.”

How does it work? Chang-Diaz, a mechanical engineer and former NASA astronaut, calls the engine, with an exhaust temperature of 5 million degrees, an “alphabet soup of super-charged particles. This is what the sun and stars are made out of.”