This engine seems to work like an ion thruster but uses metal as fuel instead of xenon gas, which is easier to refine and can be found in asteroids all over the Solar System.
It does, which makes this part curious:
But these new thrusters are capable of being powered by any metal that can burn, such as iron, aluminum or copper,” Dr. Kim explained.
Maybe they’re using an initial chemical burn to get the propellant in plasma form? Or maybe it has something to do with avoiding buildup on internal surfaces?
Don’t forget the moon! It’s a perfect location to build a lot of spacecraft, being right there but also most of the way out of our gravity well. It doesn’t have much in the way of volatiles, unfortunately, but it has plenty of metals.
Every documentary I’ve ever seen about the future says it’s crystals all the way. Star Trek, Star Wars…others. You get it.
So the metal is not the actual fuel but just the propellant? And you still need all the frigging energy to actually produce thrust? How is this different from randomly gathering water and producing H2 and O2 with the same energy source? What an absurd headline.
Yeah, the headline and article aren’t great, and conflates fuel and propellant, but the technology is reasonable.
How is this different from randomly gathering water and producing H2 and O2 with the same energy source?
Hydrogen is actually kind of scarce in the inner solar system, so metal ion thrusters would be be useful for low-thrust applications.
Dr. Kim, whose commendable career includes the creation of a plasma thruster design for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is on an ambitious mission.
TIL Falcon 9 uses plasma thrusters. (I’m reasonably confident it does not.)
Did the author mean the hall-effect thrusters used on Starlink?
This could have led to lots of hijinks on “Red Dwarf.”
The startup’s website. It’s a little light on details, unfortunately, but there’s a lot of big name partners.
