NASA’s Colloidal Thruster. December 2, 2008
Posted by gaussling in Science, Whimsy.trackback
I couldn’t resist posting a link to this article on a colloidal thruster system I ran into whilst Googling various topics on the web. Oh! What a fortunate fellow am I.
What common desktop device does it remind you of?
Inkjet printers in space?
Bingo!!!
Inkjet heads don’t cost a $bazillion each and eject droplets at a foot/sec-dollar velocity. Where is your sense of bureaucracy? Grab a gallium or bismuth liquid metal field ion emitter off the shelf. The tech is at least 30 years old, but have faith that NASA can go FUBAR for 100X the nominal cost.
30 year old technology is just about right for man-rated NASA vehicles. What struck me was the fact that the system really doesn’t take much advantage of the V^2 term in KE=1/2 MV^2. They might as well take a syringe pump into space and use that for microNewton thrust.
Very beautiful and informative интерент a blog! More such, thanks huge to the author!