4 ms·

Oh! I hadn't understood that the ion is what's being screened, but of course it would be. That begins to sound a lot more promising. I still have big questions,

Oh! I hadn't understood that the ion is what's being screened, but of course it would be. That begins to sound a lot more promising. I still have big questions, but maybe there are answers. Like... ...does the screening not have the same effect between the plates? I expect they'd be more than a few millimeters apart. ...won't this screening simply act to essentially diffuse the ion's charge into the surrounding plasma? And if so, won't that mean that (e.g.) in the case of a proton, the device's external field will still be exerting an attractive force on the net-positive plasma surrounding the it? I kinda suspect that would ultimately lead to the same cancellation of thrust that I was worried about in the absence of screening.

T-A 7y ago
In inverse order, > ..won't this screening simply act to essentially diffuse the ion's charge into the surrounding plasma? I guess that's a reasonable description, but remember you are diffusing ions (well, protons and electrons) of opposite sign, in equal quantities, so diffusion is good; they will eventually mix back together. > ...does the screening not have the same effect between the plates? I expect they'd be more than a few millimeters apart. This is a good question. For this thing to work, plasma must be allowed into the capacitor and yes, there will be screening there too. The obvious dumb way I can think of to counter that is to have not just one pair of plates, but a sequence of more closely spaced ones, linear accelerator style.