4 ms·

Is there a place to propose a new propulsion method?

4 points by ohiovr 6y ago

Who would listen to an outsider?

rbanffy 6y ago
I would assume the people at NASA that deal with advanced propulsion concepts have a high barrier, but, if you have working hardware, I'd try them first. How outlandish is it?
- ohiovr 6y ago
  I have nothing. It is just an idea. But it is pretty outlandish. About as outlandish as orion and about as improbable. But at least, not radioactive. It isn't hard to describe though.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    If you don't want to monetize it (with a patent) I'd suggest going to the Spaceflight Stack Exchange and posting the idea there alongside the question whether it'd work.
rini17 6y ago
patent lawyer?
- ohiovr 6y ago
  I suppose anything could be patented..
Kaibeezy 6y ago
What’s your reason for not just saying what it is? The odds that no one had ever thought of it before, are astronomically small. If you announce it here and it turns out to be something, at least you’d be on the record and get some credit. Otherwise the suggestion to find a patent attorney is a good one. If it’s not worth investing a few thousand ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ may as well just tell us.
- ohiovr 6y ago
  Thank you Kaibeezy, Has anyone considered using the tremendous electric fields from between the lower and upper atmospheres by using a gyrotron tuned (60ghz) to excite oxygen? The excited oxygen if it can become hot enough will dissociate into atomic oxygen and conduct electricity. A gyrotron is a maser so it should be possible to tightly focus a 5mm wave. Gyrotrons have been reported to have output intensity up to 100 megawatts in a pulsed duration. Gyrotrons are fairly efficient compared to lasers and more selective to atmospheric oxygen. A vessel in the stratosphere near the equator over the ocean could send a beam down to the ground at the same time it is being sent above. These are the artificial streamers we wish to create to connect the ground to the upper atmosphere. A massive flow of charge is directed into an expendable cartage containing a filament. Part of the strike energy goes into a solenoid that expels the filament plasma at near relativistic speeds. That is assuming 100 million joules could do that. The typical lightning strike is sometimes 5 gigajoules.. Going all the way to ground to the exosphere could draw a lot more than 100 megajoules even on a calm day. Ok, the audacious thing here besides using lightning for propulsion is that this is a non chemical, non nuclear high payload fraction booster propulsion engine which can operate using carbon fiber filament cartridges and carrier planes.
  - Kaibeezy 6y ago
    Hey, Ohiovr. Interesting idea. Thanks for sharing. My understanding has always been plasma propulsion uses high energy to generate sustained low thrust without reaction mass, making it most suitable where there is high energy availability (portable fusion reactor, etc.) and a long slow acceleration is fine, that is, deep space. With the atmospheric conductors, you are basically talking about artificial lightning, correct? Potentially a lot of energy, to be sure! The big questions must be how to harness it and for what uses it is best suited. Is there not speculation on this (sci fi or academic)? I seem to remember reading about this as being a “problem” to be solved as part of a space elevator design.
    - ohiovr 6y ago
      Good point about the space elevator issue. I think that it wouldn't take very many positive lightning bolts to foil the idea unless the cable thickness was enormous. I recall a conversation (may have been here) about this topic of using wires and light beams to electrically reach the upper atmosphere. NASA did an experiment with a long wire to draw down electricity from the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately the wire melted. I can imagine what they were up to. Then there was another experiment using an ultra high power laser to do what I proposed above except using uv radiation (which is clearly ionizing), instead of microwaves (which ordinarily are never ionizing). From reading discussions about plasma in tokamaks and polywells I understand that plasma can indeed form with enough heat from gyrotrons. Lasers are just not powerful enough to make a long enough plasma lightning rod. The researchers who used the laser were successful at triggering lightning between clouds. My contribution is "maybe gyrotrons are powerful / more effective". In SciFi and Acadamia there is tremendous interest in high power non chemical propulsion. In the past it has centered on nuclear energy. The problem with it is the thermal nature of it and the difficulty of scaling it to powers we have on earth. In the air and in space it is challenging to exchange waste heat. But the ironic thing to me is that ultra high energy is around us all the time if we only knew what to do with it. It is over the earth, in the Van Allen Belts, in solar wind, it is even in the magnetic field of the sun.

4 points by ohiovr 6y ago

Who would listen to an outsider?

I would assume the people at NASA that deal with advanced propulsion concepts have a high barrier, but, if you have working hardware, I'd try them first. How outlandish is it?

ohiovr 6y ago
I have nothing. It is just an idea. But it is pretty outlandish. About as outlandish as orion and about as improbable. But at least, not radioactive. It isn't hard to describe though.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  If you don't want to monetize it (with a patent) I'd suggest going to the Spaceflight Stack Exchange and posting the idea there alongside the question whether it'd work.

rini17 6y ago

patent lawyer?

ohiovr 6y ago
I suppose anything could be patented..

Kaibeezy 6y ago

What’s your reason for not just saying what it is? The odds that no one had ever thought of it before, are astronomically small. If you announce it here and it turns out to be something, at least you’d be on the record and get some credit. Otherwise the suggestion to find a patent attorney is a good one. If it’s not worth investing a few thousand ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ may as well just tell us.

ohiovr 6y ago
Thank you Kaibeezy, Has anyone considered using the tremendous electric fields from between the lower and upper atmospheres by using a gyrotron tuned (60ghz) to excite oxygen? The excited oxygen if it can become hot enough will dissociate into atomic oxygen and conduct electricity. A gyrotron is a maser so it should be possible to tightly focus a 5mm wave. Gyrotrons have been reported to have output intensity up to 100 megawatts in a pulsed duration. Gyrotrons are fairly efficient compared to lasers and more selective to atmospheric oxygen. A vessel in the stratosphere near the equator over the ocean could send a beam down to the ground at the same time it is being sent above. These are the artificial streamers we wish to create to connect the ground to the upper atmosphere. A massive flow of charge is directed into an expendable cartage containing a filament. Part of the strike energy goes into a solenoid that expels the filament plasma at near relativistic speeds. That is assuming 100 million joules could do that. The typical lightning strike is sometimes 5 gigajoules.. Going all the way to ground to the exosphere could draw a lot more than 100 megajoules even on a calm day. Ok, the audacious thing here besides using lightning for propulsion is that this is a non chemical, non nuclear high payload fraction booster propulsion engine which can operate using carbon fiber filament cartridges and carrier planes.
- Kaibeezy 6y ago
  Hey, Ohiovr. Interesting idea. Thanks for sharing. My understanding has always been plasma propulsion uses high energy to generate sustained low thrust without reaction mass, making it most suitable where there is high energy availability (portable fusion reactor, etc.) and a long slow acceleration is fine, that is, deep space. With the atmospheric conductors, you are basically talking about artificial lightning, correct? Potentially a lot of energy, to be sure! The big questions must be how to harness it and for what uses it is best suited. Is there not speculation on this (sci fi or academic)? I seem to remember reading about this as being a “problem” to be solved as part of a space elevator design.
  - ohiovr 6y ago
    Good point about the space elevator issue. I think that it wouldn't take very many positive lightning bolts to foil the idea unless the cable thickness was enormous. I recall a conversation (may have been here) about this topic of using wires and light beams to electrically reach the upper atmosphere. NASA did an experiment with a long wire to draw down electricity from the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately the wire melted. I can imagine what they were up to. Then there was another experiment using an ultra high power laser to do what I proposed above except using uv radiation (which is clearly ionizing), instead of microwaves (which ordinarily are never ionizing). From reading discussions about plasma in tokamaks and polywells I understand that plasma can indeed form with enough heat from gyrotrons. Lasers are just not powerful enough to make a long enough plasma lightning rod. The researchers who used the laser were successful at triggering lightning between clouds. My contribution is "maybe gyrotrons are powerful / more effective". In SciFi and Acadamia there is tremendous interest in high power non chemical propulsion. In the past it has centered on nuclear energy. The problem with it is the thermal nature of it and the difficulty of scaling it to powers we have on earth. In the air and in space it is challenging to exchange waste heat. But the ironic thing to me is that ultra high energy is around us all the time if we only knew what to do with it. It is over the earth, in the Van Allen Belts, in solar wind, it is even in the magnetic field of the sun.