Transcript of Webcast:
Space Day 2003
January 30, 2003

With Guest Expert:
Andrew Petro

>> Hi, I'm Lea Bentley from the Distance Learning Outpost and we're live from Houston Texas at the Johnson Space Center.
Today we'll be talking about the third Space Day challenge which is "Watt Power!".
You're to design and build a working model of an aircraft that is self-propelled using a renewable energy resource and can remain airborne for a short distance, as well as you'll -- write a story and illustrate it using your aircraft, as well as create a timeline with past and future events of flight.
All right.
Well, I want to encourage those who are joining us today who have not registered for the challenge, you can still do that if you go to this website and register.
The teachers classrooms and teams will receive incentives.
You have until March 3 to enter.
Teachers, there are great resources for to you do throughout the school year.
Check out the challenges.
You have until March 3 and great teacher incentives as well for your class to participate.
We have somebody with us today that will help us answer your questions for this challenge.
It is truly a challenge.
It has gotten me thinking about all kinds of things, how you might find a renewable energy source, etcetera.
You guys are about halfway through.
First let me tell you about Mr. Petro who is with us today.
He is an engineer.
He worked for McDonald Douglas after college.
He got to work in Mission Control and work with the shuttle astronauts.
Andy has been working on a very cool project and the plasma rocket.
Plasma propulsion so he'll be able to share great information with you about his experiences in all the different areas he's work at NASA.
He's been on teams as well as seeing all kinds of different spacecraft.
He is a spacecraft designer and has worked on projects to look at those space crafts that will take us to the moon again and to Mars in the future.
Let's talk to Andy a little bit.
Be sure to put your questions into the chat room so Andy can answer those for you.
Well, Andy, welcome.
>> Thank you.
>> It's good to have you here with your expertise.
>> I'm glad to be here.
>> These students are about halfway through, those who have already registered and taking part of this and some are just beginning.
We'll be able to give them some information.
Now, you are working on a fantastic project right now, the plasma propulsion.
I know you've worked on teams and things.
These students are about halfway through.
What do you think and how have you experienced projects that -- when you reach the halfway mark?
>> Well, I think when you get about halfway, you begin to find that some of the plans you made at the beginning, some of the things you expected to work a certain way, haven't turned out quite like that.
So it's often a time when you have to go back.
Sometimes it can be a little bit frustrating.
You have to go back and sometimes change some of your ideas that you started off with and go in a new direction.
You shouldn't be afraid to do that.
It's the kind of thing that happens all the time in real space projects and any kind of coming up with any kind of new idea.
So I think at this point, you know, look at where you are and if you find you need to go back and make some changes, do that.
And I think you'll find it will help in the end.
>> Now, one of the challenges I was trying to brainstorm some things, too, is renewable energy source, renewable energy.
What are some suggestions that you might have for the students as they think about their renewable energy sources for their aircraft?
>> Well, one of the things people have looked at is solar power, for example.
And using energy from the sun to provide the electrical power to run motors and other things.
You might consider something like that.
There is a picture here of a NASA project of a solar-powered airplane.
It is very different looking from an ordinary airplane because it has to be made very lightweight and has a large surface on the top to collect the power from the sun.
This may not work for the kind of project you're doing where you don't -- maybe you don't have solar cells that you would need to do that.
It may be too big and heavy for you to use.
But the way to think about it is maybe in science class you've talked about KINETIC energy.
You want to have some kind of stored energy on your airplane that you can use to push it forward.
A simple one you might think about is instead of storing it in the form of fuel or things we normally use, maybe use a rubber band which you can twist up.
That represents potential stored energy that can then be released to maybe push a propeller and there may be other ways to use a spring that will release energy and push it forward.
Another one that comes directly from rocket propulsion is using compressed air, storing air like for example in a balloon.
When you blow up the balloon you've got stored energy in the form of the air inside which can then be released to push it forward just like a rocket does so you might be able to find some way to put something like that on an airplane.
So again, it's just a way of finding a way to store energy and release it to push your plane around.
>> Well, I know the students have been working and have some of those renewable energy resources and it will be great to see what they've come up with.
We have a question from the chat room.
A students says, is solar power viable away from earth?
>> Yes, it is, definitely.
At least certainly near in space around the earth and at least out to about the distance of Mars.
It will drop off as you get away from the sun and out around Mars you get about 1/3 of the solar energy that you get near earth.
But that is still quite useful and because out in space you don't have an atmosphere like we do here, it isn't interfered with as much as it is on earth and you don't have to worry about things like clouds and other kinds of weather that will interfere with it.
Once you get past Mars it does begin to drop off quite a bit.
That's why we're looking at other energy sources to use for deep space missions.
>> Speaking of that a question from the chat room is, what are some possible fuels for use on Mars?
Or actually getting us to Mars.
You have some interesting information for us.
>> Yeah.
Well, of course we could use solar power but it is going to be difficult to get a lot of power as we move away from the earth further out.
One way we are looking at right now is using nuclear power.
Using a reactor to generate electricity and using that electricity to run a rocket engine.
That is also something you can use when you get to Mars for power.
You could use solar power but there will be a lot of problems with the atmosphere and dust interfering with it.
A nuclear reactor on the surface of Mars would be great for providing power.
>> Excellent.
Kind of along the same lines these guys with creating aircraft.
Here is a question.
What types of new technologies are in the works for aeronautics in the daily flying of planes?
>> One thing that will make a big difference and I think you'll find when you try to build your model airplanes is the weight of the aircraft makes a big difference.
And there is a lot of work going on in advanced technology of materials.
Making new materials that are very strong but very light.
And that is going to completely revolutionize the way we build airplanes and any kind of vehicles in the future.
Even structures like buildings and bridges where we can make them much lighter weight than we ever have before.
And that will change everything.
>> Well, talking about and speaking about lighter weight.
What are some of the materials that we use in spacecraft development?
>> The most common right now is aluminum.
Almost everything is built with aluminum which is a common, everyday material that we're used to using.
But we're beginning to use materials that are made from carbon fibers that are kind of wound together something like fiberglass, if you've seen that.
But it is even stronger and more lightweight than that.
That is the direction that we think will really take us toward extremely lightweight structures in the future, building these things from materials made from small carbon fibers.
And that's I think really the future of that type of material.
>> Excellent.
We have a question from smart lab in Cincinnati, Ohio and their question is, is there enough oxygen in Mars' atmosphere to run an internal compression engine like those we use in vehicles on earth?
>> No.
There is probably not enough oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars to do that.
But there may be ways to come up with other kinds of engines that would use the oxygen that is in the atmosphere.
It's combined with the carbon in the form of carbon dioxide.
If you could separate that out you could use the oxygen as a form of -- with a fuel to burn much like we do here.
>> Excellent.
Well, let's think about these kids have to develop a timeline of past and future events in the history of flight.
Important events.
Thinking about that, what are some things that come to your mind that are past events in the history of flight that are significant in your projects?
>> Well, one of the ones that we've just been talking about recently is a guy named Robert Goddard.
He was working back in the 1920's and 1930's before there was a NASA developing a new kind of rocket engine which is the liquid propellant rocket.
At that point it was a brand new idea.
And he worked on his own for years getting private funding.
People giving him a little bit of money to keep his project going and I think now I look back at that and his struggles because it is very much what we're trying to do now.
The kind of rocket.
This plasma rock earth we're working on is as different from anything we have today as his rocket was back 50, 60 years ago.
So we look at that as a big milestone.
Somebody who was doing more or less the same kind of thing in his time as we're doing now.
>> Well, speaking of processes and steps you take in the projects you've been working on, I know there is a lot of teamwork involved and teams are working on these Space Day challenges.
What is the process that you might take from beginning to finish through a project?
>> Okay.
That is something we've also been thinking about a lot because we're beginning a project to build a model of our rocket engine to test on the ground and it will be the first time we do that.
The first step is to decide what it is you're trying to do.
That may sound simple but you really have to get together with your whole team and make sure everybody understands what it is you want as an end result of your work.
Then it's good to brainstorm.
Try to come up with lots of different ideas.
Get everybody's ideas out there to think about and then you begin to pick what you're going to do making little decisions about doing it one way or another and gradually you begin the design.
The design process is really just a matter of making a whole series of decisions about what you're going to do, how you get from having basically a blank sheet of paper to a finished product at the end.
>> I know it's a long process, too in the models and design.
>> It can be.
>> We have some information or a little video that we can show actually part of the project that Andy and his team are working on right now.
Would you like to tell us more about this?
>> Yeah.
I guess as we start, we'll show you a little video that shows the actual activity in the lab.
What we're doing now is we have a chamber, a vacuum chamber.
The rocket engine we're building will only work in space in a vacuum so we have to test it in a vacuum by building an air-tight chamber and pumping the air out.
We've turned on the plasma rocket and now we have views of the team that operates this experiment.
It is a team of scientists and engineers that have come up with the ideas.
The man in the middle is our project leader who came up with this idea 20 years ago.
He has been working on it a long time.
In the last few years we've been able to build this experiment you see and are able to operate that to test out the idea to see if everything is going to work the way we think it is going to work before we build an actual model of this rocket engine.
There is a lot of planning and preparation that goes on in setting this up.
What you see there took many years to put together and will continue for years to come in doing these tests.
We can look through the port holes and see what the plasma is doing inside.
It forms this hot beam of light and that's the actual plasma that is blowing through the rocket and out through the exhaust and that's what would push the spacecraft forward if it were hooked up to a spacecraft.
There is lots of discussion.
We take measurements as we're doing this experiment to see how it's behaving and there is always lots of analysis of that.
There is mathematicians that do computer models of how it should behave to predict what is going to happen and then we look to see if it does behave the way it's predicted to behave and it gives us important information for designing the next version of the rocket.
What we're showing in this video is how the different people come together to plan it out and then to conduct the experiments and to understand what is happening.
The equipment you see is all built just to operate in the laboratory.
So we're several steps away from actually building something to fly in space.
It is big and heavy.
Doesn't look like a spacecraft but this is really how anything that flies in space begins with a lot of testing and laboratories on the ground.
And you can see the vapors come from the magnets that we use which we cool down to super cold temperatures so that the electrical resistance is very low and we can run a lot of current through those magnets to create a very powerful magnetic field.
It's the magnetic field that holds the plasma in that tight beam you see through the little windows otherwise it would spread out in every direction but we're holding it with the magnetic field, which is an important part of how the whole rocket works.
We're looking at some information -- measuring temperatures inside to make sure that everything works the way it is supposed to.
The -- the plasma that you see through the windows is actually close to a million degrees.
That would melt anything it touched.
We're able to keep it from doing that by holding it in place with a magnetic field.
So it's kind of an amazing thing to watch to see that plasma streaming through and not touching the walls because you know if it touched the walls it would melt the walls immediately.
So it's interesting to watch in that way.
Of course we're always, as you can see, taking measurements and looking at those to understand what is actually happening inside.
We have lots of instruments attached to the outside that are measuring what is happening inside.
Of course it's a challenge because you have to work with this vacuum chamber.
Everything is inside with no air around it.
But of course we're outside looking in and everything we do has to pass through the wall of the chamber to the inside.
And it's a real challenge at times.
Now the video is going to a simulation of what a mission to Mars would be like using this rocket propulsion.
So we would build a very large ship and orbit around the earth and it would depart from there.
The people would get on board.
We would put all the fuel in and then this is showing it getting ready to leave the earth.
What we'd do is turn the engine on.
This kind of engine it doesn't use a lot of fuel but it uses it very efficiently.
And for that reason we're able to run the engine all the time.
So it's always pushing on its way out.
A typical mission to Mars with using tem call rockets like we have today would fire the rockets for a short time and then just coast all the way.
What we do is we push all the way so it gently moves away from the earth in a big spiral as it goes faster and faster it begins to escape from the earth's gravity and eventually completely breaks away and that's what you see right now.
It is now crossing between the orbit of the earth and the orbit of Mars.
That part of it takes about three months, which is about twice as fast as we could do with any kind of rocket engine we have today.
As it's going along it's constantly going faster and faster as it approaches Mars.
Halfway there it turns around and starts to slow down so it doesn't fly right past Mars.
And so there you see it approaching the planet Mars as it gets closer.
Then once there, the big ship will stay out in orbit around the planet Mars.
It won't go down to the surface.
A smaller part of the ship will separate away and that will be the part with the crew.
The astronauts that will be going down to the surface of Mars.
You can see it now getting ready to go into orbit.
The ship with just the crew that is going to land is now separated away.
The big ship will wait for them in orbit for them to return.
It's now flying into the atmosphere of Mars just like the shuttle does when it comes back to earth.
You can see the trail of vapor behind as it speeds through the atmosphere and it is gradually slowing down.
You can see the surface heats up as it does that.
But there is a special heat shield on the spacecraft to allow for that.
And it flies down closer to the planet.
You can see it going across the sky of Mars.
And then it uses a regular chemical rocket at the very end to slow down for the final landing.
You can see it fires some control jets and then it's coming down toward the surface with its engines firing.
The landing lights come out and the crew is now on Mars.
>> Wow.
Would you say at what point in this process are you as far as the development of this and you're talking about that it's just in testing phase right now and not ready to go into space?
>> We've been working on it for many years understanding the science of how it works.
It's why we do the experiments.
We are at this point to get ready to start building a model that we'll be able to put inside a vacuum chamber and test so we're at a stage where we're going to test a whole complete rocket engine on the ground in a chamber in a laboratory on the earth.
We think we can do that in the next two years or so.
After that, the next step will be to take a model like that and put it in space and what we would like to do is put it on the space station.
Because it produces an exhaust it is very gentle.
We can put it on the station and run it without affecting the space station in any bad way.
We hope to use the space station as our next laboratory for testing this.
>> Wow, that's fantastic.
I want to remind those who have just joined us you can still enter the challenge.
It is due March 3.
Your submissions are due by March 3 but you can still enter.
Go to the Space Day.com website to find out the information.
We have several teams who have entered the chat room as well.
I want to say hi from a team from Iowa.
They want to know if a solar-powered aircraft, if a solar powered aircraft could ever be strong enough to carry people.
They noticed the Helios is big.
>> They have made that as lightweight as possible but I wouldn't rule out the possibility in the future.
I was talking earlier about new materials that are very lightweight.
And I could imagine someday building a real aircraft, a real airplane, out of these very lightweight materials that would then be able to fly with people and cargo like airplanes do now.
And use solar power.
I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility.
If you look back at the Wright brothers the very first airplane, it only carried one person and only flew like maybe the length of a football field.
It didn't seem like that was very practical as a way to carry people around but you look around today less than 100 years later and we're using airplanes of all different sizes and shapes to do that.
And one of the big changes was, you know, all of the other improvements in engineering that made it possible to make, you know, make airplanes that big and that strong.
So it doesn't look like we can do it today but you never know what we'll be able to do in the future.
>> It's encouraging the students designing the aircraft.
Their designs are preparing them maybe to design something in the future to maybe a solar-powered vehicle that can carry a lot more weight.
It is pretty exciting.
We are excited that you're part of these challenges.
Let's take another question from the chat room.
What kind of considerations do we need to allow for outside of earth's atmosphere?
Things we don't worry about here.
>> Okay.
Things you worry about out in space beyond the atmosphere, one is radiation from the sun.
Not just the light and heat that comes from the sun, but the natural radiation that can be harmful to people and to equipment, even radios and electrical equipment, computers.
The way we handle that is by shielding the people from that.
But that's something we have to be very careful about especially as we get further from the earth.
There is bands around the earth that sort of protect people even at the height of the space station, for example.
When we want to go on to the moon and Mars we'll have to be much more careful about the radiation out there.
Of course, the extremes of temperature.
There is no atmosphere to kind of mix the heat and cold that we experience on earth together, which keeps things a little more moderate here.
But out in space you get high extremes of very high temperature if you're in the sun and very cold temperatures if you're in shadows.
So those are two things, I think, to be aware of.
>> All right.
Here is another question from a team from Iowa.
They want to know if fuel cells together with solar panels could make the hydrogen needed for a lighter than air aircraft?
>> Well, I guess you could use hydrogen as a way, but you have to think about how much volume of hydrogen you need to lift something.
If you're just trying to do it that way.
If you look at a blimp which they are usually filled with helium.
They are extremely large for the size of what they carry.
Maybe a few people.
So fuel cells normally you take hydrogen and oxygen and combine them together forming water and it also creates electricity.
But I think if you want to make something lighter than air you need just a really large volume of hydrogen gas and you have to look at how much you'd really need.
I think get an idea about that, you might look at something like the blimps you see sometimes flying overhead.
>> At question from Cincinnati, Ohio.
What kind of fuel do spacecraft use now and what other types of fuel are being explored?
What are other things out there besides plasma propulsion that you've already talked about?
>> With a chemical rocket we use oxygen and some kind of fuel.
Something that will burn with oxygen.
That has been the way things have been done through the whole history of space flight.
Today we're looking at these forms of electric propulsion like what I'm working on, the plasma rocket which just uses one gas as a fuel.
And we would like to use hydrogen is probably our first choice.
We could use almost any gas and there is even people looking at using water as a propellant.
In this case you're not burning it you're finding some way to force it out of the engine at high speed.
And in our case we're using the plasma to do that but there may be lots of ways to use things.
We would like to find fuels that are not as harmful as some of the ones we use now that can be dangerous.
If we could use just a simple gas like hydrogen or nitrogen, that would be really ideal.
And water would be also a great choice if we could do that.
>> All right.
How far do you think a solar cell can go?
>> There is really no limit to how far a solar cell can go because it's being pushed by the sun.
Eventually as you get further and further from the sun, the force exerted by the sun on that cell will decrease to the point that it won't be pushed very much anymore.
I think certainly within the solar system out to Pluto something like that might be good.
At least for a small -- a small spacecraft>> Wow, that's incredible.
That is a long way out to Pluto.
>> It won't necessarily get you there fast but it will get you there.
>> We have a question from one of the students at smart lab in Ohio.
They want to know, are the astronauts scared when they go up into space?
Now, when I think about that, I think about the fact that I'm sure they're scared but I can imagine their excitement is above and beyond.
>> Yeah, I think, you know, I'm sure there is the excitement that anyone feels and maybe feeling nervous about doing something unusual for the first time.
It is an unusual thing to be doing.
I think they have a lot of confidence in all the planning and preparation that went into these space flights.
I happen to work, as I mentioned before, the leader of our project is an astronaut so I've had a chance to talk with him.
He's been in space seven times on the space shuttle and had a chance to talk with him about his experience.
I think each time he's a little nervous as it starts, but there is a lot of power that you're sitting on in that rocket and everything does have to work properly.
You see the engines firing on a shuttle liftoff right now in the picture.
And everything has to work perfectly well.
And there are backup systems for those times when things don't maybe work exactly right.
But there is risk involved in it but I think they -- you know, they feel confident when they do it.
>> Seeing this video one of the questions was how fast does the shuttle go on ground and space and taking off and what kind of fuel does it use?
We were taking a look at those rocket boosters.
>> What you were seeing was the oxygen and hydrogen being combined and what actually comes out is this water vapor.
An incredible amount of energy being released at that point and so, you know, it's within the first minute or two it is already going faster than the speed of sound and by the time it gets to eight minutes into the flight when it's just about in orbit it is going about 18,000 miles an hour.
So it goes 0 to 18,000 miles an hour in about eight-and-a-half minutes.
>> Very fast.
One of the students wants to know how long does it take to get to the moon and do you think we'll be going there again?
>> Okay.
I hope so.
It takes about three days.
Leaving the earth, you know, and then traveling out to the moon.
Of course, the last time anyone went there was over 30 years ago.
The last Apollo mission.
I do think we'll be going there again.
Every time I look at the moon I wonder why we haven't gone back.
I think it's our first destination beyond the earth and I think, you know, we'll be seeing people traveling there again hopefully soon.
But we'll have to see.
>> Well, of course, the next question is then, when do you think we'll be going to Mars?
>> Well, I think the trips to Mars will follow those -- that return to the moon.
But I think we have -- we could have the technology we need to get to Mars in the next 10 to 15 years if we wanted to work on doing that.
10 years is the soonest I would expect that to happen.
It may take longer.
It depends on how much the country and others want to invest in doing something like that.
If we're given the chance, we can do it.
But I think the decision to make that step just hasn't been taken yet.
>> All right.
Now, you've talked about the processes that you've gone through and we've talked about where you're at and what is going to happen.
You said about two years before this project after you actually see flight.
One of the questions in the chat room.
How long does it take from the beginning of a spacecraft design idea until it actually flies?
>> Well, that can vary a lot.
It depends.
But typically it could take five to ten years.
I think that's typical.
But it really depends on the project.
Some are very complex.
Something like the space station they've been working on, you know, almost as long as I've been working in the space program.
And it has to do with what is going on and how much money is being invested in it and what kinds of changes are being made in the plans.
Something much simpleer can be done in a less amount of time.
It depends on the investment made in the beginning.
>> Another team from Ohio, they're 7th and 5th grade have a question.
What is the best way to store energy collected from solar panels?
>> Okay.
Well, the way it's typically done now is in batteries like on the space station you can see the station has big solar panels and that energy is stored in batteries.
Very much like batteries you use here on earth.
Another way is with a fuel cell where you use the electrical power to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and then you can then recombine those back into water again and it releases electricity.
So that's an interesting way to store it.
Another way is a fly wheel.
A big -- a big ring, a big heavy ring that is spun up.
Like if you've played with a gyroscope it's that type of thing.
You spin it up like a top and that energy is stored in the rotation of the big ring.
Or fly wheel.
And then you can get that energy back out later when you need it.
So that's another way that is actually being looked at as a good way to store energy in a spacecraft.
>> That's a great answer for the team.
We have a question from Corey, Tyler and Tiffany.
They would like to know how big a solar cell would have to be to carry three people to Mars?
>> Okay.
That is a pretty technical question.
But I would think to do something like that, the solar cell you may be surprised, would have to be maybe a mile or two if it was square for example a mile or two on the side.
You might need a few square miles of surface to make that work.
It's very, very large.
We look at solar cells for carrying robot probes out to outer planets.
Something that is much lighter.
You need a lot of weight if you carry people because you need to have something for them to live in and all of the food and all the supplies they need.
It can get very heavy.
>> Now from smart lab, we have heard that carrots were grown on a previous shuttle flight.
What do the carrots end up looking like and is there a resource on-line where we can see pictures and get information?
Do you know about that experiment?
>> I know that kind of experiment has been going on and they've grown other things, too.
And there may be some websites you could look to find more about that but I don't know a lot about that.
I know in general the kinds of experiments that have been done, things grow pretty much the same.
I don't know what the scientists have actually found when they looked at it more closely.
>> Our mission right now, they're doing experiments up there now so check out space flight.NASA.gov and see what they're doing now in their mission 107.
Tell me about what interested you in aerospace engineering and spacecraft design?
>> Okay.
Well, it's almost as long as I can remember when I was very young was the early days of space flight so when I was little I would see on television, you know, the early flights, the flights to the moon, the Apollo missions and that got me excited and made me feel this was really something important going on and I wanted to be a part of it.
In a way I've been kind of designing spacecraft almost as long as I can remember.
When I would make little drawings, that's what I was usually drawing and it's been a challenge along the way, though.
I found in school I didn't always have an easy time with math and even sometimes with science, but I knew it was important for what I wanted to do so I just stuck with it.
I've gotten my chance to do what I've always wanted to do.
>> Well, I know your team is made up of all kinds of different degrees or career choices and scientists, mathematicians, engineers.
Can you tell me a little bit about the makeup of your team and some of those people you work with on a daily basis?
>> Yes, sure.
It is a -- it's quite a team because we are -- our leader is this astronaut who came up with the idea of this propulsion system that we're developing.
So he's an astronaut, a scientist and engineer in his schooling.
I'm an aerospace engineer.
We have a lot of physicists with a special form of science looking at the way nature works.
They study, you know, matter and energy and so we have -- that is a major part of what we do.
We have a mathematician that does the computer modeling, computer simulation of the experiments.
And we have -- well, we have a technician that does the welding and the machining and operating the crane to help put our experiment together but he's an important part of our project and has to work with the scientists and engineers all the time.
And we have students involved, college students and students in graduate school that work with us.
And college professors that are providing guidance to those students that work with us.
And we just -- and we have people around the country that we work with.
We talk to by phone and we go and have meetings with them from time to time.
So it's a very broadly spread kind of team with a lot of different skills that come together.
>> It's very cool.
It gives these students the different part that they're working on in the design some interest as they begin to build their choices and career choices and degrees in college so that they might come to NASA and do what you're doing and work with you.
And find a way for us to get to the moon again and to Mars more efficiently.
Of course, Joe and Emily and Cody from Iowa just ask, you know, how soon do you think that we'll go to Mars?
You said we would go to the moon probably first.
How soon do you think we're going to go to Mars?
>> That's one of the most common questions we get asked and I always wish I had a better answer.
We're going to go when we're ready and we'll be ready when, I think, we've made the investment of time and money in developing all of the technology we need to do it.
Like I said, we could do that, I think, in maybe ten years if we really got started now.
If we don't get started now, it is going to take longer.
But I would say ten years from now is the soonest it could happen.
In order for it to happen then, though, we need to get started now.
We're trying to do what we can developing things like this plasma rocket and a lot of other projects NASA is doing that will help us get ready.
But, you know, it is not going to happen until, I think, the country or some group of people say we're really going to do this.
>> Let's think about the whole -- all the different projects you've worked on, what are some of the difficulties that you have encountered throughout your career here at NASA in all the different projects you worked on?
>> That is an interesting question.
I think the biggest challenge in doing any project is working with other people and -- because it takes so many with special knowledge to put together really any kind of space project.
You all have to work together as a team.
You know, I think my experience has been pretty good on that but it is not always easy.
It is not always easy to get people that come from different backgrounds to work together nicely.
And that's a big challenge.
I think that is something that you'll experience in your projects and it's something important to learn to do.
I think that's important.
Another thing is kind of related to what I was just talking about.
We here at NASA have great ideas of things we want to do.
We don't always have the support of the country, the money we need to go out and do those things.
So sometimes it's difficult for us to face the reality that we don't have the support we need to do some of the exciting things we would like to do.
So those are two things that are big.
>> Since it's going to be these guys and girls doing the challenges that will take us to Mars and ten years from now and beyond that.
So really as you're working on these challenges, work hard on those teams and learn those skills so that you can build up that support and come to NASA and take us to the moon again and to Mars.
The group from smart lab in Cincinnati, Ohio wants to know, can hydrogen be used as a fuel for space travel?
>> Yes, it can.
It's used now even on the shuttle is using hydrogen along with oxygen to burn in the chemical rocket engine.
What we plan to use in the plasma rocket is hydrogen by itself when we turn into plasma and it's what comes out the back of the rocket.
Hydrogen is a very important rocket fuel.
>> Excellent.
What are some of the exciting points in your projects that you've worked on in the plasma propulsion as well, what is something exciting that you've experienced?
>> It's exciting any time you take an idea that you've had in your head and you put it on paper and then you turn that paper into a drawing or whatever into a real thing and then you go use it.
So there have been a whole series of those kinds of things that have come along.
Whenever you see your idea actually become a reality that's very exciting whether it's a little thing that you're doing, working on by yourself or if you're part of a very large project.
Working -- I worked on the space shuttle program and I remember the first time the space shuttle flew with people on it I had worked with the crews that -- preparing for that flight.
Seeing that take off was an amazing thing.
Maybe even more so when it landed.
When it took off again.
That's been early on that was a very exciting thing.
I worked with the Russians on the spacecraft that is used with the space station and we made some changes to it.
Seeing that happen, seeing that fly was also exciting.
And just getting to travel to Russia and work with the Russian engineers.
Having grown up in a time when they were really seen as the enemy to be working with them as partners and friends was really a very exciting change.
A change not just for us but for if whole world that we were a part of and I think that that was exciting.
>> I want to remind everyone if you're watching and haven't joined the challenge yet that you can go to this website to get -- learn more information about the challenges.
And be sure to send in -- send us questions.
We have a few more minutes for you to ask questions of Andy and of his expertise.
So be sure to send those questions in.
Also, some great websites for you as far as reference to some of your space shuttle questions and experiments and things is space flight.NASA.gov as well as we have the science.KFC.NASA.gov are good resources for that.
You can take a look at what is going on with shuttle resources.
All kinds of interesting things happening there.
Be sure to catch that.
Be sure to send your questions in.
We're sharing information and getting information from Andy petro, an aerospace engineer at NASA working on spacecraft design and particularly the plasma propulsion.
We're glad to have him today.
Here is another question.
Let me -- what kind of fuel would it take to get back from Mars and how long would it take us to get back?
>> Okay.
It typically takes as long to get back as it takes to get there.
If we can get there in three months we could get back in about three months.
One of the ideas is use what we can find on Mars as fuel to get back and that's why we like to look at lots of different kinds of fuels.
Mars has water and so from the water we could get oxygen and hydrogen which makes great rocket propellant and beyond that we'll maybe have to get there and see.
>> All right.
Well, you know, Andy, I know you came after college to work for McDonnell Douglas as an engineer.
How old do you have to be to be an engineer or scientist as NASA?
>> How old?
You need to be -- you have to complete a college program in engineering or science, which usually takes about four years.
So four years or so after high school.
22, 21, 22 is probably typical.
We do have students that come here, though, while they're in college and often they're just 18, 19 years old when they get here and what they do is work for a semester and then go to school for a semester back and forth so they're gaining experience working here while they're getting their education in college.
It takes them a little longer to finish college but by the time they're done they've worked here quite a bit and have important experience.
We have lots of young people, people of all ages working here.
>> That's a great way to get young engineers involved in the process back and forth coming through the Co-op program.
Now here is another question from the chat room.
Can fuel supplies perhaps be grown en route?
Grown or developed, I would say.
>> Fuel supplies.
Don't know of any ideas right now to do that, although way off in the future we can imagine ships that run on hydrogen and there is a little bit of hydrogen gas spread throughout the whole galaxy, really.
But it is very, very thin.
There is not very much of it.
But you can imagine a ship going fast enough it could have a scoop in the front that would gather that up as it goes along.
So that's a possibility.
But that's something pretty far out beyond anything we're really looking at today.
People think about those kind of things.
>> Here is a response to our discussion about degrees and careers.
What are some of the subjects in school that are most important to study?
>> Well, I think what everyone will tell you is math and science.
They are kind of the key things.
The mathematics and then, you know, chemistry and physics and those types of things.
But I would also add that a big part of engineering and projects as I mentioned was teamwork.
So anything that builds your experience in doing that is good and you have to communicate.
You have to write and present your ideas to other people so what you study in English is also very important.
So to me my favorite subject really was history.
It really didn't seem to have a lot to do with this but it's what I like and I still find it interesting.
So I think the most important thing is to get a good education.
You can always build up skills in certain areas, but emphasize the math and the science, of course.
>> Now, Iowa asks, what do you think is the most important technology for regular people that has come from the space program?
>> Well, I think computers.
Personal computers.
And not just the ones we see in front of us on our desks or other places but ones that are hidden inside things that we use every day.
Inside our cars and appliances in the house and things like that.
I don't know that it came only from the space program but I think the space program had a lot to do with pushing the technology in take direction for the early spacecraft.
So I think that is probably the one thing that really jumps out.
And the other one would just be communication.
The fact that we can watch television programs coming from all over the world live is something that only happened after the space program began when we could put up satellites to make that possible.
Something we take completely for granted now.
But came from the space program.
.
>> I have one last question from smart lab in Cincinnati, Ohio.
What is the longest anyone has ever spent in space?
>> The longest is a Russian that was on the Mir space station was up for 14 months, over a year.
A few people have been up for a year.
That's about -- that's about the longest anyone has been up.
>> Now we're coming to the end of the WebCast so if you still have a couple of questions be sure to enter them in.
I want to -- I want to challenge students out there.
There is a website that's up to nominate your teacher to be a part of the educator astronaut program.
Send your teacher into space, not for a bad reason but for a good reason.
To experience being an astronaut.
Go to this site and you can nominate your teacher to be part of the educator astronaut program.
All right.
Let's -- space.NASA.gov is that website so check it out.
You've designed models through this whole process.
How many models does it take before you get a final product, do you think?
>> Oh, I don't know.
It could be a lot.
It depends on the project.
But we see in our project we're going to build one that we test on the ground and then we expect to build one that will test in space.
And then the next one will probably go on a spacecraft that flies off somewhere.
So two or three perhaps.
But sometimes it takes a lot more.
And for example with airplanes they're usually wind tunnel models that are built and, you know, which I think we might see a picture of one of those.
So, you know, engineers will build scale models of the airplanes to test in the wind tunnel and they may build a full scale model just to make sure everything fits together well.
We're able now with computers, though, to eliminate some of that by building the model in a computer.
The mathematical model of it and eliminate some of the model building.
I still like to do that.
I think it gives you a good feel for what you're working with when you can actually put your hands on it.
>> All right.
Well, another question from the chat room.
What is the advantage and disadvantage of using a blenlded wing body design for earth flight.
>> It's a very interesting question.
I think we might have a picture of one that will illustrate that.
It's the X-33 that was developed to be a reuseable launch vehicle to take people from earth orbit.
I guess it's pretty technical question in a way.
What you can see is you end up with a shape that can be -- it would be a compromise between a typical airplane shape where you have a round fuselage in the middle and wings.
This blends the two together.
It has some nice advantages.
It may weigh less to get the same result but you end up with a problem with the shape of it because you can't necessarily pack things in as nicely as you would like to in that shape.
And also the -- when you're designing a vehicle like that, the center of gravity where the mass is located inside is very important.
That can be difficult with that shape.
So it's interesting and exciting kind of shape for new spacecraft and airplanes, but it presents some problems, too.
>> All right.
We have another question from smart labs in Cincinnati, Ohio.
They want to know how has the research done in space affected medical research?
Do you have any experience with that at all?
>> I have just general appreciation for the fact that learning to keep track of people's condition, medical condition in space has led to all kinds of technology that is now used on earth to take care of people in hospitals and be able to send information about how they're doing to other places.
So I think we've seen a lot of the technology developed to keep astronauts healthy used for people every day on earth.
>> All right.
We're coming to the end of the WebCast.
Be sure if you have some last minute questions you need to send them in very quickly.
All right.
Well, Andy, is there something that you would like to share with the students again in relation to their challenge, designing a working model of an aircraft that is self-propelled, has a renewable energy source and must remain in flight for a short distance?
>> Well, just to use your imagination.
Don't be afraid to try something unusual.
And don't be discouraged if it doesn't work the first time.
We find in all our projects is we don't always get it right the first time and we keep trying.
I would encourage you to do that.
>> That is very true and we all work on teams here at NASA.
It is so important that you learn those skills as you're working together and use the expertise of your teammates to build and go through that process to get that final product.
Any last questions, send them to the chat room.
Don't forget you can nominate your teacher and you can continue to register for the Space Day challenges.
1, 2 and 3.
Be sure to check them out at Space Day.com.
You'll be able to get more information about them there.
They are due March 3 so -- but you'll continue to receive incentives, teachers, for your teams entering.
This WebCast will be archived so you'll be able to continue to reference it for any information that might help you toward your design challenges.
It's been a wonderful time.
Thank you so much.
I would like to thank quest at Ames Research Center for running the WebCast.
The challenger center in the greater Washington area.
All of our partners, of course, with Space Day, and everyone here at this Distance Learning Outpost and for all the preparation.
Thank you so much and don't forget to check if you need to reference back for information.
Thank you, Andy.
>> Okay.
Thank you.
Good luck.
>> Bye-bye.