Saturday, April 18, 2015

Electro-motive Force for Space Travel

My better half sent me an article on electro-motive force which was interesting enough but what I really enjoyed was the fact that it had links to youtube that started with bone conduction of audio ( which I have always found very interesting) which then had links to electric motive force as it applied to spacecraft and space travel. Check out the video link and I think that you might find it equally compelling.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This has been around for a while:
http://www.space.com/28732-nasa-dawn-spacecraft-ion-propulsion.html

It uses electricity from solar panels of a nuclear generator to ionize some of the reaction mass it is launched with and then shoots the ions out the back at terrific speed. Chemical rockets do the same thing but the spent fuel travels very much slower relative to the ship. The advantage of this is that a much smaller amount of "fuel" needs to be sent with the craft to eventually reach the same speed as a chemical rocket. The thrust is very, very low but it can simply be left on continuously.

Star Trek "Space Seed" saw Khan in suspended animation in an ion drive craft. The concept isn't new.