THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409060048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Don't ask Robert Ash to find the planet Mars in a clear night sky. He doubts he can; he claims to be a lousy amateur astronomer. But in his mind's eye, Ash easily envisions the Red Planet's surface.
It's dotted with gas stations.
Not the self-serve versions familiar to millions of American motorists, but fuel depots for astronauts headed back to Earth from the first long and grueling Mars expedition.
If Ash is right, if spacecraft could refuel on the Martian surface, a manned voyage to Mars could come much sooner than later.
Smaller, more efficient rockets could be used, cutting mission costs by as much as two thirds, from an estimated $400 billion to a little over $130 billion in 1994 dollars.
``It's to our benefit to throw as small an object as we can to Mars,'' said Ash, eminent professor of aerospace engineering at Old Dominion University. ``(Otherwise) you wind up with a staggering amount of propellant making up the majority of the payload you're sending from Earth. Those missions are just too expensive.''
At the start of this current semester, Ash and ODU graduate students are wrapping up a three-year technology study of a new approach to a Mars trip.
It's a variant of an idea Ash first originated in the mid-1970s while working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Ash devised a device to pluck oxygen directly from the carbon dixode-laden Martian atmosphere, essentially by using electricity to heat Mars air sufficiently to free oxygen atoms from their carbon-atom bonds. The oxygen could then be routed to collection tanks for use as liquid fuel or for human life support.
Recently, Ash has made further refinements, borrowing a technique called ``glow discharge'' that was developed in Hampton by NASA Langley researcher Ron Outlaw.
Glow discharge is similar to the process that produces neon light, but operates at temperatures in the range of 850 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 1,000 degrees cooler than the original design.
Should glow discharge be incorporated into a full-scale device, the result would be a smaller, more lightweight and efficient mechanism that could be mounted under a spacecraft or sent ahead on robotic probes.
``It's a brilliant idea,'' said Kumar Ramohalli , professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Arizona and co-director of NASA's Space Engineering Research Center. ``In the long run, it's the only way to make space exploration and exploitation economical: using resources found on the planets or in space.''
The 100,000-member space advocacy group The Planetary Society, also located in Pasadena, was impressed enough with Ash's notion that it has underwritten his ODU research to the tune of $40,000 over the past three years. The society has an annual budget of roughly $4 million, of which it funnels not more than $500,000 yearly to research projects.
Planetary Society executive director Louis Friedman says his organization is careful about what and where it spends.
``If there's something particularly interesting going on, we support it,'' Friedman said. ``We did support Bob Ash. This is truly an enabling technology - a technology that could make something happen.''
According to the University of Arizona's Ramohalli, NASA has begun a several-month study to evaluate means of keeping the cost of any Mars mission under $250 billion. Ramohalli believes that, barring any unexpected technology breakthrough, surface refueling may be the only cost-effective way to go.
Realistically, Ash says, it may take a minimum of 25 years before governments marshal the will and money to mount a collective expedition to the Red Planet. He hopes he is alive to see it.
``Mars is the most Earth-like of the planets. To me the mystery of Mars is what caused it to evolve away from an Earth-like environment,'' Ash said. ``This is a planet that had rivers, lakes and abundant water at some point in its geologic history. It would be helpful to find out what happened and use that information to help us on Earth.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/
Robert Ash believes his machine offers a more efficient way to
explore Mars by extracting oxygen from the planet's surface.
by CNB