Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Potential of the U.S. Space Program

Between BP dealing with the worst man-made disaster ever, Arizona spearheading a Mexican witch-hunt, and climate change ushering in the impending apocalypse, the U.S. space program has been put on the back burner.  But what if it wasn't?

According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, we could go to Neptune and back in 5 years.

Sure, some of the necessities like an "onboard 100MW nuclear reactor that will power the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters" doesn't exist yet, but all it takes is money!  $4 trillion to be exact.

As you may or may not know (probably not), Obama's space plan is really bad.  So bad that Neil Armstrong and 26 other NASA legends wrote him a scathing letter addressing their devastation.  So this won't happen tomorrow, but the technology could be developed in less than 50 years.

Due to the danger of cosmic radiation, speed is essential in furthering mankind's space travel.  If we wanted to go to Neptune, rather than building a 4240-ton aluminum shield to protect the crew, it would make more sense to just travel really, really fast.  Hence that insane, magnetoplasmadynamic engine.  And without all that extra weight from the shield, as aforementioned- we could get to Neptune and back in just 5 years.

Sure, $4 trillion is more than the entire federal budget last year, but maybe in 2060 we'll have that kind of cake.

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