Script Hi class, my presentation is on how to build a rocket to travel from earths inner atmosphere, to mars.

Despite the difficulties there are a lot of ways to become airborne. All rockets do so under Newtons third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I have tried to condense my presentation as much as possible. Another thing to take note of is that rockets tend to borrow techniques from other rockets, incorporating them into itself. So first, I'm going to list the ways that are most likely to be used to take us to mars. And at the end of the presentation I will show my design for the ideal spacecraft. The first method is chemical propellants. Chemical propellants are really just a form of explosives. All spaceships that carry humans have used propellants. (read off) (read off) Oxidiser meets fuel source, they combust. In this chamber there is usually an ignition source, unless its hypergolic. Also notice that at the exhaust, this is where Newtons third law comes in. His law states For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Think about the formula down there, Thrust = mass * acceleration/velocity. When the fire escapes it is knocking around particles, gas particles. But because of Newtons law, the particles it bumps into that are connected to the ship move too. All this ruckus is basically bumping the ship forward. This is the rating. Chemical propellants aren't very fast relative to the next few methods. They are terribly inefficient, having a low specific impulse, and are fairly expensive because of how much fuel we'd need. Also for cost, the higher the fraction, the cheaper it is. This next method is known as the ion thruster. This is a very sic-fi sounding name, but the first ion thrusters were being designed 60 years ago. These Ion thrusters don't have much thrust, most ion thrusters are only able to produce a few grams, or the mass of a sheet of paper. But they do have a very high specific impulse. This is saying that for the same mass, an ion engine will run for much longer, therefore getting the craft faster. So fast it could take us to mars in 39 days! (read off) Explain: The xenon enters a chamber. It is bombarded with high frequency radio waves, this makes it very energetic, and it becomes a plasma. Because the plasma is very hot, and would melt the ship if it came in contact, it is suspended by magnetic compression, therefore not touching the chamber. These magnets accelerate the electrons in the

plasma out the exhaust. This exhaust is negatively charged and would be attracted back to the ship if it wasn't sprayed with cations, positive charge from the neutralizer at the top there. This whole thing is powered by some outside reservoir, say a battery. This video shows VASIMR, during an on ground test. VASIMR is an ion thruster that is in working condition and is ready to be deployed on to spacecraft. This next video is just a speed comparison..you see the ion engine will increase speed exponentially.. until it finally passes the chemical rocket, who is still drifting, and not slowing down because space is frictionless The rating for the ion engine is very high. It is efficient, and fast (read) (read) So this really a kind of crude diagram of whats happening. Inside layers of shields and shock absorbers is a reactor. It works similar to the chemical rocket in the sense that it is expelling fire from the back. This is the rating. Its good, but not like the ion engine. (read) So you can see, the ships very simplified. We first have our chemical thrusters. The one is the oxidizer an the other the fuel source. On a side note the most effective chemical fuel, debatably is, Fluorine-Hydrogen. That is what is used. You probably noticed I wrote the analogy first gear. If you were to compare this to the gears of a bike, then this would be the gear you start off with. Chemical reactions are strong enough to boost the shuttle out of the atmosphere. Our "second gear" is our ion thruster. It runs on xenon and is powered by an on board nuclear power reactor, marked orange. Spaceship reactors have been used by russia for years, so this wouldn't be new technology. Alright, thanks for listening to my presentation