I found this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20931499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20931499 Looks like someone may have been around this

I found this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20931499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20931499 Looks like someone may have been around this concept a lot longer than I have. But for radio reception, not for long distance atmospheric discharge channeling. I think the solenoid / filament idea is simply untenable due to the enormous amount of power concentrated in them (a coil would simply vaporize). A much more straightforward idea would be to use an open ended tube capped on one side (with shielding) that is lined on the top and bottom with graphite conductors, in a configuration you might find in a rail gun. Graphite is used as I am hoping some of the crazy thermal issues may be better handled with ablation instead of active cooling. Think of a railgun tube being like a combustion chamber. There may be some advantages to including an magnetic expansion nozzle. Liquid propellant (liquid methane for example) could be injected inside and when the lightning comes in contact with the top and bottom rails massive amounts of current flow and thoroughly ionize the propellant. Huge Lorenz forces from the multi kilo-amp / mega-volt discharge develop in the conductive plasma blasting it out at around. An electromagnetic sheath might be advantageous to keep the hot plasma from pressing too hard on the tube / rails conducting away energy. Exhaust velocity can be tuned depending on needs during boost. On the low end, 200 kilograms could impart ~1000000 newtons of thrust at an exhaust velocity of about 7km/s. On the high end 2 kg of propellant could yield ~100000 newtons, 1/10th the trust but 10 times the specific impulse. Of course these are just rough calculations in very ideal circumstances.