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The speed of space travel is currently limited by the quantity of chemical fuel that spacecraft must carry. Robert Zubrin, President of Pioneer Astronautics, introduces the dipole drive - a new propulsion system which uses ambient space plasma as propellant, thereby avoiding the need to carry its own.
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Dr. Zubrin introduced that concept some time ago, but it's been improved since then. Craig Davidson took Dr. Zubrin's research and is working on a variant that uses a high temperature superconducting coil that does not require as large an area to achieve the same effect. Both variants can also provide electrical power to the craft they propel.
This stuff falls into the category of things that are ultimately required for Mars colonization, but won't get funded now because it takes food off other peoples' plates, primarily the rocket engine and propellant tank manufacturers. I think Craig correctly noted, despite Dr. Zubrin taking great exception to it, that the primary purpose of NASA (to Congress and NASA's contractors) is to feed money to those contractors, especially Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, etc.
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The term Dipole in Rf are the lengths that are tuner for best transmission and reception of electrical energy, with a Dipole in space radiating RF would act like a static shield around its length add in a little plasma and you get the van radiation belts around the pieces.
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