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Not Science Fiction: Electric Propulsion Comes of Age With Psyche Mission to an Asteroid:
Psyche's Hall thrusters will be the first to be used beyond lunar orbit, demonstrating that they could play a role in supporting future missions to deep space. The spacecraft is set to launch in August 2022 and its super-efficient mode of propulsion uses solar arrays to capture sunlight that is converted into electricity to power the spacecraft's thrusters. The thrusters work by turning xenon gas, a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs, into xenon ions. As the xenon ions are accelerated out of the thruster, they create the thrust that will propel the spacecraft.
Belters rejoice.
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Electric Propulsion Comes of Age with Psyche Mission to an Asteroid
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22 2021, @01:00PM (2 children)
"super efficient" huh? let's not forget "team stickler" and all the "dark energy" that was used to filter xenon from the atmosphere.
this energy was most probably not harvested by the ship builders to power the "athmospheric destillery"...
so alot more energy is " dark" inside the pure xenon gas which ofc is also expelled, heyya?
maybe someone more familiar with "athmospheric distillation" engineering can give us a kwh ballpark for 1kg of 99% pure xenon gas...
tho i heard whispers of it occuring above normal concentrations in nuke reactors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday November 22 2021, @05:19PM
The point is that you save a significant amount of rocket fuel to get the xenon gas bottle into space compared to the large mass of conventional rocket fuel and engines. Even if Xenon is expensive to harvest on earth, it is considerably cheaper than constructing and fuelling such a rocket.
If you are considering the full costing of the xenon, including harvesting on earth, you should compare against the full costing of the rocket fuel, including launch costs.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 22 2021, @07:46PM
Another source of Xenon is from nuclear fission, most of the isotopes formed are very short lived and would settle down into something usable as fuel pretty fast. Yet another reason to build more nuclear power plants.
Now that I think about it would a fission reactor that was small enough to power one of these engines on a probe also produce enough Xenon to use as fuel? Probably not but it would be fun if it did
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