[AR] Re: practical electric thruster propellant and power?
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2016 20:47:29 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016, Uwe Klein wrote:
what about using the particles from the solar wind?
They already carry a load. you need a B or H field for manipulation.
There have been many proposals. The plasma physics is dauntingly complex
and not well understood. Simulating every particle is computationally
impractical -- yes, even today, and for the foreseeable future too -- and
the scaling laws for collective plasma behavior are uncertain, so lab
experiments aren't that useful either. Such systems might have to be
debugged by flight test, and that's a *really* hard sell to today's
funding agencies, which typically are reluctant to invest in flight
hardware unless success is nearly certain.
Henry
Other related posts:
