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Satellite Will Breathe Air to Stay in Orbit
- nomel 2mo agoThere's no technical information in this article. Anyone have a better link? But, there are some pretty high speeds involved! If VLEO orbit is something like 18k mph, and each molecule that they accelerate is stopped an then accelerated, then a net zero force would be accelerating it out the back at 18k mph. And, say the cross sectional area of the aperture to catch it all was 0.5 the total cross sectional area, then a speed of 36k mph would be required! Wow!? Maybe not? Is it hard to accelerate molecules in space? Are they maybe accelerating them as they pass through, rather than stopping them and then accelerating them? I would assume you would have to stop them, to ionize them, to then accelerate them?
- lumost 2mo agoI would presume the goal is to have an electromagnetic accelerator of inbound charged ions to serve as thrust. You can get limitless power from solar, but propellent mass is a limiter.
- nomel 2mo agoLooks like all the designs (unable to find details of this exact one) do temporarily hold the gas to try to ionize it fully, before expelling it. Maybe not too much is predictable ionized at these altitudes? If you accelerate the wrong charge, you'll slow!
- T-A 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere-breathing_electric_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere-breathing_electric_...