Satellites That Scoop Air And Use It As Propellant
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- Satellites run out of fuel and have to de-orbit and end their missions. But what if they had access to a practically infinite amount of fuel? What if they could scoop air from the atmosphere and use it as propellant? That is exactly the research that Dr Mansur Tisaev is doing!
🟣 Guest: Dr. Mansur Tisaev
www.researchgate.net/profile/...
👉 Dr Andrea Lucca Fabris
www.surrey.ac.uk/people/andre...
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00:00 Intro
02:04 Ion engines
15:32 Effects of the solar activity
19:35 Advantages of air-breathing engines
28:13 What's next
32:05 Non-Earth applications
36:26 Interstellar applications
38:35 Current obsessions
41:03 Final thoughts
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"Every idea is science fiction at some point." the dreamer really likes that quote.
Give credit to the kid in silicon valley he deserves that ....
Isn't that how the star ship Enterprise is supposed to work, with its deflector dish ?
this young mans joy in his work just explodes off the screen
yeah, i don't know if Fraser Cain seems grumpy or if the guest is just radiating so much enthusiasm that my perception is skewed
The content of the channel this month is the greatest it has ever been.
Fraser, I just appreciate what you do so much. Thank you for interviewing the most interesting people in the world so often. You're amazing man.
Absolutely fascinating. Wonderfully informing interview, with a very polite, very intelligent individual.
The future of space science has never looked so good 👍
Fraser asks the perfect question about the atmosphere changing due to solar activity. I wish this part of the interview had gone longer. I would like to ask how fast (giving past examples) can atmosphere change, and could it be so much that the satellite could not get higher fast enough.
Typically, for something like a CIR, it could be hours to days for the interactive region to heat the tenuous upper atmosphere enough to increase drag. A CME doesn't quite do much, a coronal hole and particle streams can induce enough heating to "puff up" the atmosphere enough to become, ahem, interesting for satellite operators.
Desmond King-Hele predicted that Skylab would deorbit in 1979, way back in 1973, far before NORAD finally cottoned to that, their taking until 1977 to figure that out.
The real challenge with this is getting the lifetime up, ionized nitrogen and oxygen are very reactive with basically everything it even eats teflon ( a favored electrical insulation for spacecraft wiring) not to mention cathode materials like barium. having an unlimited propellant supply doesn't help much if your thruster eats itself after few hundred hours and destroys half the wiring. Everyone hates on xenon but besides cost it really is the best ion propellant from performance and lifetime perspective.
Sounds like there's a need to develope and certify new electrical insulation, as well as metalurgy to withstand ionized Nitrogen & Oxygen. I'm thinking a ceramic type material.
What about negatively charged engine walls that would repel oxygen ions?
@@intellectualcat4000 ions are positive charges so you would want a positively charged wall, and there are tricks like that in many drives ie segmented electrodes. the actual physics of wall erosion are complex and there many types but , ultimately you only have the electromagnetic force to work with. and you can not get 100% ionization of the propellant inside the drive, so some % percent of the propellant is going to be neutrally charged , emag forces can not deflect a neutral atom at least not at the scale and energy of practical drive systems. the high temperatures present around ~20,000C inside hall thruster for example, means those neutrals are moving fast enough to knock wall material off in process called sputtering. this is the ultimate killer of all ep drive systems. but oxygen makes it way worse due to it reactive nature.
@@trespire ETFE and XTFE are better and often preferred now a days for that reason but actively make those ions makes it worse. But this a systems problem, by "solving" the propellant issue you have created a materials one and packaging issue to lesser existent, and it is not as just a matter of changing A material you have recertify EVERTHIG the solar cells, camera optics, antennas, thermal insulation, ect, by saving the cost of few hundred thousand of propellant you now added millions possibly billions in non recurring engineering (NRE) costs the rest of the sat. in the vast majority of cases it just isn't worth it. for these to makes sense you need a large number a sats to spread NRE cost over and want them to have long life to justify using air breathing tech in first place. while the industry is moving towards the large number part , most to my knowledge want relatively short mission lives to reduce NRE costs and allow for more modern hardware to replace older sats faster. it is a cool technical feat but outside a hand full of specials missions i would not expect this see large scale adoption, at least not around earth
@@orbitONhigh I need to think about it. It may be necessary to immediately separate the incoming air stream into ions and neutral molecules at the inlet. The ions are immediately deflected by the magnetic field and enter the ramjet engine. And neutral molecules fly straight and end up in the fuel storage.
I love the doctor's enthusiasm and frasers excellent interviewing.
Lately there is an overload on innovations, which is amazing, it seems they opened a can with innovations, not only in space, also in my job area. Exciting times. I'm happy to see these developments in my lifetime. Thanks, Mr. Cain for showing us these, how do you shift them for your videos? It's a huge job. Much appreciated.
Not a terrible idea. Additionally, it is hypothetically possible to select an elliptical orbit with periapsis (low point of the orbit) to intentionally intersect/"graze" the atmosphere, whereby the craft collects/cools/stores enough atmospheric gas to not only overcome atmospheric drag, but to also provide surplus propellant on each orbital period. Assuming solar panels are used to collect enough electricity to accelerate the collected gases, the craft has the potential to have practically unlimited endurance and extreme high delta v and delta p capability. Such a craft could periodically adjust orbit to achieve low velocity rendezvous and "docking" with (grabbing) space junk in LEO (low Earth orbit), so as to propulsively de-orbit the junk (but keep the atmosphere collecting craft in orbit for further rendezvous and deorbiting operations on other space junk). Over a long enough timescale, it would be feasible to clean up LEO of most of the unwanted space debris from litterbug nations.
That said, other methods of deorbiting unwanted space junk are also feasible. The biggest hurdle is not technological, but rather, one of current human thinking and behavior. The biggest space litterbugs are national governments on the Earth, and those people need to become more responsible. One cannot solve a side of the highway trash problem by periodically picking up trash from the side of the road, if everyone else in society routinely throws garbage out of their car windows onto the side of the highway, thus causing new trash to accumulate faster than it gets picked up. Unwanted space trash in LEO does naturally (at a slow rate) clean itself up over time without intervention (due to atmospheric drag and natural orbital decay), but this still leads to a net accumulation of space trash, when too many space litterbug nations exist.
There is not as much garbage in space as you think, and all this garbage is a valuable resource for further processing. There are already 3D printers available to create new products from recycled garbage right in space.
I bet most of the junk satellites have some high dollar materials in them. Could a future space factory rebuild or recycle space junk? It's already up there, but how to get then all in one place economically? I wonder what plans Dr Mansur Tisaev has for his ships. Maybe one or more of his solar electric Scoop Air satellites, over time could round some of them up. Could a small factory be built into a Space X Starship or a future space station? Seems like such a waste and a danger to just leave them up there. Make use of them. What's you say Elon?
Would it not be possible to use a tether? They tried using them 30? Years ago for power generation but could they not be used to thrust?
Absolutely fascinating! Dr. Tisaev does a wonderful job making this topic understandable.
*Summary*
* *(**0:00**) The Problem:* Satellites traditionally require onboard fuel, limiting their lifespan.
* *(**0:52**) The Solution:* Air-breathing ion engines collect residual air particles from the very low Earth orbit (VLEO) as propellant, potentially allowing for unlimited operation.
* *(**2:04**) How it Works:*
* The engine draws in air particles, ionizes them into plasma, and accelerates them to create thrust using solar power.
* This requires careful balancing of thrust, drag, power generation, and spacecraft design to maintain orbit.
* *(**19:35**) Advantages:*
* Virtually unlimited lifespan due to no onboard propellant requirements.
* Reduced space debris risk due to rapid re-entry upon engine failure.
* Potentially lower light pollution due to lower altitude and faster passage into Earth's shadow.
* Enables science missions, improved Earth observation (e.g., higher-resolution imaging), and faster communication latency.
* *(**15:32**) Challenges:*
* Operating on a "knife edge" between thrust and drag.
* Sensitivity to solar weather and atmospheric density variations.
* Optimizing engine design for efficient ionization and acceleration of air particles.
* Developing materials resistant to the corrosive effects of atomic oxygen present in VLEO.
* *(**28:13**) Current Status:*
* Research and development are ongoing, primarily focused on ground-based testing in simulated VLEO conditions.
* Prototype launch within the next few years is anticipated.
* *(**32:05**) Beyond Earth:*
* Air-breathing ion engines could potentially work in the atmospheres of Mars and Titan.
* (36:26) Interstellar applications are intriguing but face significant challenges due to the extremely low density of interstellar space.
i used gemini 1.5 pro to summarize the transcript
Thanks! ❤
How much of your active time is needed to make a Germani link/summary?
So, Bussard ramjet, scaled waaaaaaaaay down for a more dense medium?
Edit 2: I should have guessed Fraser would get to that, my edit one is a bit more detailed on the "not feasible" explanation.
Edit: For anyone curious what I am talking about, it is a joke. The bussard ramjet was a proposal to sort of do this with interstellar hydrogen for interstellar travel, but with fusion of the hydrogen for thermal propulsion rather than electric propulsion. By the late 80s we knew it could not generate enough thrust for interstellar travel due to the interstellar medium being too low a density and by the mid 90s we knew it could not overpower the solar wind in system. But it is cool enough a concept it is moderately well known for a hypothetical interstellar drive technology.
Yeah, but using external solar power instead of fusion
It's a pity that this concept can only be used to barely maintain the orbit. If it could be used to somehow "plunge" the sattelite into the atmosphere to collect and store some gas for the next month of operations .,..
02:00. In a way, this idea reminds me another type of theorical engine at a very different scale imagined decades ago: the Bussard Engine.
This one harvests (or breathe, to reuse your metaphor) with giants magnetic fiels the hydrogene in the interstellar medium to feed its fusion reactor. That's s science fiction for now, because it would require a giant magnetic field in front of the ship, extended on thousand kilometers if I remeber well, because the hydrogene is in very very small quantity in the void of space.
What an interesting interview. It was really detailed and fascinating. Thank you.
I was interested in this idea back when propellant depots were a hot topic a decade or so ago. The idea was that these things could collect oxygen (the heaviest part of propellant) in orbit without having to launch it from earth.
Worthless. It must be compressed by 13 orders of magnitude to make liquid oxygen.
Beware. I suspect some trolls have begun using chatgpt or similar. I have noticed a recent uptick in posts using encyclopaedic yet facile/non sequitur points while attempting to insult you.
The entire clip is base on the assumption that enough propellant can be gained for one useful task: station keeping. Obviously you dont need 13 orders of magnitude to find some other application. A completely irrelevant statistic.
(and no, Im not going to reply to them)
That was a great interview.
Fraser's idea to use a similar propulsion system for interstellar travel sounds like the Bussard Ramjet concept from the 1960's. This "tech" powers spacecraft in Larry Niven's sci-fi universe.
We talked about that. The problem is that you need a 1 AU funnel
@@frasercain I thought everyone knew the Bussard ramjet has been shown to be impossible... so, how about the magnetic sail, which might be used to decelerate starships?
Had the same tought.
Not only Larry Niven talked re Bussard ramjets. This thread is a great pleasurable nostalgia review, for this 67 year old.
@@frasercain That better than a square parsec. Progress. Keep it up.
Great idea. Interested, if you can use that for those aplications:
1) Fleet of smaller "refuelers", wich would scoop the materiel, and than return to its "mothership" to fuel it. That might help with the cost of interplanetary travel (most of the cost would be the "refuel starts" from the surface).
and/or
2) "Orbital space-tug" - big powered unmanned "satelite", wich would save fuel for bigger starships by accelerating them (or for incoming space-mined materiell, or even starships - deccelerating them) on specific vector and speed.
eventually
3) "Orbital sweeper" for clearing the orbital debrie from around the Earths orbit.
Extremely informative. Please stay connected with Dr Tisaev for future interviews. He is an extremely interesting person with the ability to communicate ideas very well. I would listen to any interview with him in the future.
Fascinating. Looking foreword to see how this research progresses.
This could be a game changer if we could find a way to sustain satellites at these lower orbits that allow for an ongoing primary fuel source while also providing decreased latency (and stronger signal?) along with natural quick space junk cleanup and thus greatly mitigating if not eliminating the consequences of accidental collisions.
I just listened to this interview on the soon to be offline Google Podcasts platform. And I come here just to comment that I love the humility and the honesty of your guest.
It's so refreshing these days to have someone let you know that they are smart enough to know that some people may know more than they do, and humble enough to say explicitly that they don't know something.
Everyone of your guests is a very smart, knowledgeable, and interesting person. But there is something in the way this one speaks that feels so fresh in this world of so called "strong men" who think every opinion they have is just Common Sense™️
Great interview.
The system you described is called the Bussard Ramjet. It scoops atomic material together as fuel and ejects it for thrust.
would it make sense to have the intake variable, so you can extend its size when needed, and close it to not cause unwanted drag
Around 34:00 they talk about corrosion from monotonic oxygen. It would be interesting to test this. What I envision is a satellite with a regular ion engine, in a highly elliptical orbit, with perigee around the 150-200km. You use the ion engine every so often to boost back to your original orbit, to counteract the orbital changes caused by drag. What you care about is having long exposure to those rarefied atmospheric conditions, so you can see what it does to solar panels, cameras, antennas and other such instruments.
Thinking further, I'm not sure that you need an elliptical orbit. You will mostly be thrusting near perigee anyway to maintain your orbit. The elliptical orbit would allow you to use smaller solar panels, as your necessary duty cycle of the ion engine will be lower than in a low circular orbit.
Cool method; you would need to rendez-vous with a large tank to transfer the fuel, then have it undock and get more propellant and after filling up the larger tank you'll raise its orbit and continue having refuelings.
This is perhaps the best channel I wish I'd subscribed to over a decade ago.
Awesome journalism, huh?
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up.
Hey, let's put these people in power. 💙
This sounds a little like the Bussard Ramjet, only without the fusion...
He was good. Well worth the time to watch.
🤘😎🤘
19:39 Great video, Fraser, but I don’t think the first user of this technology will be NASA, ESA, JAXA, or any organization dedicated to space exploration. Instead, I think it will be the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) or a similar organization in another country for several reasons.
One, even lowering the perigee of a reconnaissance satellite a little bit would greatly improve its imaging or eavesdropping capabilities. Two, I’ll see if I can confirm this, but I believe the NRO has the record for the lowest perigee of any operational satellite. And three, I hate to say it but the NRO has fewer funding issues than NASA.
*EDIT* It looks like a Chinese research satellite has the record for the lowest perigee, which it had for a few days. However, the NRO’s Advanced Gambit-3 satellite had a sustained and repeatable perigee of 120-130 kilometers (65-70 nautical miles).
Very interesting video!
This idea seems so innovative. I imagine there are more applications than discussed in the video.
This interview gets a WOW Mr. Cain. Thank you.
That was fascinating, thank you!
What if I put my hand into the ion engine plume?
Would I even notice?
Would I get cancer?
It would feel like a light breeze.
Probably have a warning saying:
CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65 WARNING
This product can expose you to chemicals which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.
@@frasercain I doubt you would even feel a breeze, since the plume density is so low, it would feel more like a evil heat lamp. Did a "test"once were we're put a little plastic toy about half meter from a 1KW hall thruster, took about an hour to melt.
One obvious disadvantage of Ion Drive is, of course, that the Enterprise can easily detect your ion trail which renders your cloaking device effectively useless.
They easily escape by time travel back in the past, no problem
Really love dr. Tisaev!
Really cool ideas. I think it's great someone is thinking of them. A perpetual space thruster. Cool man.
Thank you.
Good luck with it all.
This was good
thinking about the interplaneteary medium as reaction mass, I ran into a paper about theoretical ambient plasma wave propulsion using a very large radio antenna for momentum exchange with diffuse plasma using alfven waves. It seems like a very cool idea and it obviously wouldn't have any issues with low plasma density.
Need to learn to surf the magnetic field lines.
Could you have some kind of compressor to be able to, in an emergency, like a solar flare, you can release some stored air into the chamber to increase thrust and then when you go back down, refill the storage.
Redwire just received a contract from DARPA to provide air-breathing Sabresats. The mockups are awesome…imperial shuttle?😂
The Redwire website does have totally imperial shuttle renderings.
Check out the MECO podcast's latest episode for an interview with Redwire. However, Fraser's interview here might be better. In any case, this tech is so cool!
Would a progressing elliptical orbit help reduce the specific impulse needed? This would allow the ion thruster to fire continuously, but confine the drag to a short portion of each orbit where the spacecraft dips into the upper atmosphere to collect the mass needed
Good idea. At the top of the trajectory, it can connect to an orbiting solar power plant and replenish its energy reserves.
@@intellectualcat4000 That's what the extension cord is for
I was so exicted to see this, since it got left conpletely off the weekly pill!
Interesting video
Sucb a cool concept!
Whilst at a lower altitude, the sun's reflection from solar panels will last a shorter time, they will happen more frequently so there might not be any great advantage.
i remember that scene from Stargate Universe when the starship Destiny plunged into a star to "recharge". ohwell haha
I imagine a spaceship with a large funnel that collects random dust from interstellar missions to ionize and shoot out the back.
Here is an idea: air Breathing ion engines powered by ground based lasers cutting out the size and the weight of solarpanels.
Sun synchronous orbit means the light pollution is constant. I think he realized the problem with the question half way through answering and did a poor job of pivoting from "good point" to "there is a compromise to be made". My thoughts: sun synchronous orbits keep the direction of the incoming light bounded such that you can somewhat control how much reflects toward the ground versus into space.
Fraser’s question of changing the orbit was misunderstood I believe. He wasn’t talking about changing the orbit aphelion and perihelion, he asked (I assume) if one could switch the plane of the orbit and surely that would be possible, over many orbits of course.
Wow. Ion engines are actually quite a bit more powerful than I realized. Enough thrust to levitate a piece of paper on earth feels like it would be significant over time in microgravity.
These are other ion engines. They work on different principles.
The idea is attractive, but I remember some old papers that looked at the Bussard Ramjet with a magnetic scoop and concluded it wouldn't be effective for propulsion, but made a pretty effective brake.
A ramjet is a totally different technology than an ion engine. We already know they're incredibly effective and fuel efficient
Think about the knock-on effects of such a design. You could possibly build such a spacecraft without expensive gyros and reaction control systems, using only fixed thrusters. It could stay up almost indefinitely. Deorbiting and and orbital debris are a total non-issue. Amazing.
Is it possible to do dynamic soaring on the solar wind? Model gliders get up to astonishing speeds, downwind of hills.
Where's the hydrogen ram scoop? They worked so well in Ringworld! These ion engines are awesome! Thanks
If you have free fuel perhaps you could run a small tanker to refill the portable tanks of the larger craft?
Why not put the solar panels in the shadow of the collection area
What a smart young man.
I think it would be more convenient to place solar panels behind the Earth's atmosphere and transfer energy to satellites using a laser beam. Thus, in low Earth orbit, we would have two special objects - solar power plants at an altitude of 1000 km and a fuel collection device at an altitude of 100 km.
I wanna watch this now but I gotta do Uni 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️ Be back soon!
Would it be possible to get a really big apoapsis through this as long as the periapsis is kept in the goldilock zone of thrust? or is there some kind of limitation to speed?
Between an ever changing atmosphere, drag etc. it sounds like a mad balancing act. Cool, but.... risky? Dunno. I suppose if you've got 10,000 starlinks losing one or two isn't the end of the world. But if there's increased solar activity, for instance, would the engines be able to compensate for increased atmospheric density at such a low altitude? Would you need something like cold gas thrusters for backup?
11:00 not lift, but perhaps angled surfaces can give plane changing impulse.
If we ignore the obvious problem of looking directly at the sun, how close could you get before you would have to turn your head to a side/up/down (relative to the person obviously not spacially) to see it's physical boundaries? Assuming it's a standard person's eyesight and not an ultra wide camera.
I know the energy trade off for all on-board systems is hard to manage but I wonder if using vacuum to feed the intake in drag prone areas could reduce drag. Perhaps a laser could help clear the path of resistance created by drag as well. Of course it's more weight and more energy in an already deficit self generated energy situation. I was thinking of an engine that could run on the salad of gases in breathable air alone. I was convinced I was the greatest forward thinking mind of our time. Thanks for keeping me strongly grounded in reality...I think. After evaluating what's in breathable air and at what height and temperature I concluded that generating energy is possible but only on a desk top novelty level...NOT a pulitzer prize level. This is just the conversation I wanted to hear...thanks.
Isn't Venus's Sulphuric Acid atmosphere pretty close to the surface so at the altitudes we're talking about I doubt it would be an issue can't speak for the atomic oxygen though :) Great interview
Clouds of sulfuric acid on Venus can serve as an excellent source of hydrogen, and therefore water. We can recycle all the clouds of sulfuric acid into water.
Poul`s Tau Zero was a story about interstellar fuel......
I LIKE seeing satellites in the sky!
I hope they don't make all the new ones non reflective.
Dr. Tisaev probably answered this question in one way or another, but would such a satellite work in a polar orbit, inclined equatorial orbit, etc?
I have this mental image of an air breathing satellite orbiting Mars but only just high enough to miss Oympus Mons.
Since this could enable LEOs that are geosynchronous, wouldn't it make space elevators more achievable because they would need far shorter cables (and therefore lighter requiring materials with much less tensile strength)?
They wouldn't be geosynchronous.
What cables do you mean? Geosynchronous orbit is around 40.000 om.
This method of fuel gathering can be scaled for farming in orbit and massive fuel loads can be filled into spacecraft in orbit. Chemical thrust to get into orbit, then ion engines to get around?
Why don't you add collectors in front of the solar panels offsetting their drag?
Would it be possible to store the collected air? Like go down to refuel, go up and use it?
Also they talk about round orbits, how would an elliptical orbit work where the thruster only work while down at perigee?
long wire in atmosphere to catch ions, or utilize earths magnetic field to generate electricity, redirect that charge to the thruster.
Please talk about DARPA OTTER program, they are making this now. Also non air breathing ESA Skimsat
Excellent interview, thank you! Concerning the light pollution, don't these low altitude satellites have to remain in sunlight all (or most) of the time? In other words, they don't WANT to pass into shadow. This implies that these satellites are only practical on the solar terminator (dawn/dusk) so an internet constellation would be a real challenge.
If there is a supply of Xe on board the orientation could be reversed and the thruster could be used to decelerate the satellite into rapid controlled reentry.
what about electrodeless lortenz force thrusters like helicon thrusters for air breathing electric propulsion? I would expect it to handle atomic oxygen much better, but it's not as developed and I don't know if they handle lower plasma densities as well.
Fraser, why can't we adapt this ion engine for use here on Earth? We have hydrogen, gases, ions. Our needs would be scaled down versus a spacecraft. Hope it's not a bad question.
Because ion engines don't generate that much thrust and thus can't overcome air resistance. In space this issue doesn't exist because drag is virtually non existent or greatly reduced.
I have some concerns/questions
Wouldn’t giving all that gas in the exosphere added kinetic energy accelerate the overall rate of off-gassing from earth, altering magnetosphere characteristics and limiting the (granted still very-)long term feasibility of such engines.
No expert here but I don’t think it’s powerful enough to blast the ions out of earth’s gravity.
@@Tiaintherain I didn’t say blast just excite over time
Don't worry, the ion beam will slow down and dissipate in the atmosphere if you direct it tangentially to the Earth's surface. Its speed will decrease so much that it will remain in the atmosphere. This method, on the contrary, will return a lot of gas to the surface of the Earth.
Would they be released from higher orbit then re-enter or otherwise ?
Couldn't the intake of atmosphere counteract the drag through a compressor / suction & thrust?
Could the solar panels be higher up in space, linked via a cable with fuelfeed and using a second engine or other ?
Could solar heat / infrared be used for power instead of light, what is the effect of exposure to sunlight at those altitudes ( hot topside, cold underneath ? )
Could this be part of a 'ladder' to transport gaseous fuel from the Earth's surface or higher altitudes to l.e.o. ?
I remember lightning goes up into the atmosphere as well as down, could this have any effect ?
There are too many questions here.
It's an old concept found in sci-fi books called Bussard engine
We talk about that later in the interview.
How about scraping dust off an asteroid and using iron ions for fuel?
Ideally, you should fly without fuel at all.) You can send an ion beam of iron to the ship. The ship will accumulate this iron, and then return this iron back.
Question: What are the environmental impacts of this technology?
This is basically resource extraction. Whenever humans extract resources, it has some kind of effect on the environment.
Does the output have different chemical properties than the input?
If multiple companies deploy swarms with this technology, could it change some properties of the upper atmosphere?
Is the exhaust simply escaping the gravitational influence of earth?
...
And all the follow-up questions that result from the answers.
Big fan of you and everything space propulsion. :)
The resource that's being extracted is solar energy, the air is passing through the ion engine like a sail captures wind.
@@frasercain Hi Fraser!
The energy from the sun is used to change the gas. It is turned into a plasma and then exhausted with much more kinetic energy than before. Therefore, something different is going out than in, no?
The air particles will be on ballistic trajectories. And plasma particles from the are hitting Earth all the time. It would be interesting to see if the Earths magnetosphere redirects them back to the poles. Remember that Earth is already losing 100s of tonnes of atmosphere every day.
Wouldn't a fleet of these be blowing our atmosphere off, at well beyond escape velocity?
Seems like we'd be just firehoseing it off... Is this really a good idea?
The ion beam will be directed tangentially to the Earth's surface, so the air will return back to Earth.
How long will the acceleration electrodes last with atomic oxygen attack?
There is more hydrogen than oxygen in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. Hydrogen is not dangerous for electrodes.
@@intellectualcat4000 Not so. Only comic rays contain any hydrogen.
Quote: "The composition of the Earth's atmosphere by altitude.
It is clearly seen that the concentration of nitrogen N2 begins to rise sharply above 15 km with a corresponding percentage decrease in the amount of oxygen O2.
Above 30 km, a noticeable hydrogen content of H2 suddenly appears.
And starting from an altitude of 90 km, there is no oxygen O2, water H2O in the air, and the nitrogen content of N2 remains less than 10%.
Above 90 km, hydrogen H2 with a volume content of more than 88% becomes the main component."
Can the Earth's magnetic field be used for propulsion? Like if you have two strong magnets and when you want no thrust have the magnets oriented in opposite directions to each other, but when you want thrust, angle the magnets so the north and south are both pointing the same direction. Of course you'd need gyroscopic stabilization to keep the spacecraft oriented in the correct direction.
it is actually in use already and has been for a long time, though not for propulsion, but for orientation control. see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetorquer
@@unitrader403 Oh neat, I didn't know that. But I was thinking more along the lines of using a gyroscope to keep the magnets orientation out of alignment with the Earth's magnetic field to provide propulsion rather than using the magnets to orient the spacecraft.
well, if you find a method to counter the tendency of this to turn the craft around it could work.. but i doubt it will be gyros (or at best in some supplementary role), since these will quickly saturate..
one way i see would be to have the three coils of a megetorquer going through the cnter of mass but with an angle of like 10deg to the propulsion axis, and rotated from each other by 120deg, and modulate their strength in such a way that any tendency to rotate is quickly countered.. still some problems to solve, for example you need some reliable method to get the shape/direction of the magnetic field around the craft. you cannot measure it since the propulsion system will overpower it, so you have to estimate it while active, and constantly switch the propulsion off to take a measurement, and then switch it on again.
Is it practical to create a vehicle whose permanent task is to scoop fuel from the atmosphere and then deliver some of it to a different satellite, saving back a bit of fuel to perform the scoop and deliver maneuvers again?
Could this be used to reduce the fuel required to be carried by the ascent stage of a rocket, launch with less fuel, aim for circularizing at the air skimming altitude, boost just enough to build up a decent reserve while in that region, and then use the gained excess to boost further up once it has accumulated enough? Can you get a good propelant/drag ratio in an elliptical orbit letting spacecraft raise the apogee by skimming propelant and boosting at the perigee? And how about about attaching some of those collectors/boosters to the ISS to make it a tad more self-sufficient when it comes to reboosting it's orbit?
edit: I can't believe how many times I had to edit this due to typos and messing up the wording
Hey, air breathing chemical rockets are possible and theoretically the math checks out for improving launch efficiency. Check Bucknell's turbo rocket concept, there's even a nuclear variant. Solar power isn't dense enough to send a rocket to low orbit from sea level, unfortunately.
@@Bobsry16 What about just saving the the fuel that would be required to boost past the thin drag orbit where the rocket can boost with the skimmed air? instead of carrying that amount of fuel all the way to that altitude, or alternatively, just saving the fuel that would be used in that stage (pun not intended) for alter?
@@TiagoTiagoT Your going to need nuclear solar panels/thermal energy or chemical oxy-breathing to do so. Not solar panels and ion engines, unless you have super special panels.
@@Bobsry16 How about running in parallel with regular rockets to save fuel during the thin-air orbit period of the ascent? Or did you misunderstand me and replied thinking I meant using air-ion all the way from take-off instead of just after reaching that thin-air orbit altitude?
This technology has many interesting solutions, but they need to be tested in practice. Elon Musk crashed a lot of rockets before they learned to fly.
MIT is on this idea for years.