by David Ells
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027072188/plasma-jet-el...This is a fascinating way to watch the basic premise of Phil Eklund's game in motion (literally & figuratively), from the very beginnings of technology development via private free enterprise funding - and now private citizens can take whatever small part they like to help make this happen!!
Ad astra!
David
PS. I pledged at the $50 level and no, I do otherwise have any association with this project, company, or anything else related.
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"A prototype electric pulsed plasma jet thruster for reliable, high performance, low cost interplanetary space transportation.
Plasma Jet Electric Thrusters for Spacecraft
Demonstrate a prototype electric pulsed plasma jet thruster which can enable highly reliable, high performance, low cost interplanetary space transportation.
Our Vision:
Our vision is to design, build, and experimentally demonstrate a prototype pulsed plasma jet thruster targeted for orbital maneuvering, asteroid/comet rendezvous, orbital debris cleanup and interplanetary transportation. Our company, HyperV Technologies Corp., has extensive experience designing, building, operating, and deploying extremely high performance single-shot plasma accelerators of many different shapes, sizes, and power levels. These plasma jet accelerators have been developed for applications in fusion energy and high energy density plasma physics research [www.hyperv.com].
We believe this same basic pulsed plasma jet technology can be adapted to increase the robustness and decrease the cost of spacecraft electric propulsion, thus opening the door to many new exciting robotic and manned space missions. Our first step with this project is to successfully demonstrate repetitive operation as a thruster.
We invite you, the citizens of Earth, to join with us as we design, construct, test, and execute this demonstration. The culmination of this project will be an all-up, laboratory demonstration of our prototype thruster. You will be updated via our Kickstarter Blog, Facebook, Twitter and uploaded video of the firing posted to our website.
Our technical objectives for this thruster development project are to meet or exceed the following thruster performance goals:
•Design and construct a high density gas fed plasma thruster operated at an average continuous input power level of about 1.0 kW
•Achieve a specific impulse (Isp) of 2000 sec (which means an average exhaust velocity of about 20,000 m/s)
•Operate at 5 pulses per second (5 Hz) for a minimum duration of one minute
A Plasma Jet What?:
A plasma accelerator is a device which forms a slug of hot, ionized particles, or plasma, and launches these plasma pulses at high velocity. Our plasma accelerators, one of which is shown in Figure 1, consist of two parts: A formation section and an acceleration section. The formation section forms and ionizes a plasma armature or slug from a source material and injects it into the next section. The acceleration section consists of a pair of straight parallel metallic electrodes separated by a pair of ceramic insulators. A large current is then driven through the electrodes and plasma armature, accelerating the plasma slug using the resultant self-generated magnetic Lorentz force. The performance of our existing single shot plasma accelerator designs has already been demonstrated [poster presentations from the 2009, 2010, and 2011 American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics annual meetings www.hyperv.com/papers.html ]. We must now adapt this existing low cost, scalable technology to transform it into a repetitively pulsed, continuously operable, compact plasma thruster.
Why are plasma thrusters important for space travel?:
Spacecraft electric propulsion is extremely fuel efficient and dramatically reduces the amount of propellent mass and volume that a spacecraft needs to travel to and/or return from its destination in space. Because a spacecraft's size and weight are reduced, the overall cost of launching that spacecraft into orbit or onto an interplanetary trajectory is significantly reduced. Since the 1960's there have been nearly a dozen different types of electric propulsion thrusters which have been developed, some of which have already flown in space. Yet while many of today's modern communications satellites employ a variety of electric thrusters to maintain their precise orbits above earth, to date, only four robotic science spacecraft have flown missions using electric propulsion as the primary means to propel the spacecraft through deep space. Because of its great potential, NASA, which was the first to launch a deep space mission using electric propulsion, is using and continues to study electric propulsion for greatly expanded space missions in the future. For many future missions, electric propulsion is the only viable option. It is therefore imperative that we investigate all useful forms of electric propulsion, including pulsed plasma jet thrusters.
For fun here is a fascinating Walt Disney clip from around 1957 of a massive manned mission to Mars using electric propulsion as envisioned by Wernher von Braun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wIXZsbjIxA. Today we could also use solar panels instead of nuclear to generate the electrical power. Yes indeed, spacecraft electric propulsion has the potential to bring back the magic of the early years of space exploration!
So why bother to develop Plasma Jet Thrusters if there are other types of electric propulsion systems that have already flown in space?:
Because, quite simply, we think ours will be better! We believe our thruster technology has the potential to be just as efficient as existing electric thrusters (such as ion and Hall effect thrusters) and with similar specific impulse. But our advantages will be derived from a thruster that is less complex (and much more robust), which can use a variety of propellants including gases, inert plastics, and propellants derived from asteroids, Mars, the Moon, etc., It will also be far cheaper to build, and can be more readily scaled to larger sizes and very high power levels than current electric propulsion systems. Our plasma thruster technology should be scalable from a few kilowatts all the way up to megawatts of average power. The electricity which is needed to power electric thrusters would most likely come from new high performance solar panels, but could also utilize other compact energy sources. From a practical viewpoint for satellite design, our thruster will have much higher thrust per unit area than ion or Hall thrusters, thus taking up less room on the rear of the spacecraft.
Due to the efforts of a number of private space companies, there is significant potential for the cost to reach orbit to be significantly reduced, but even these lower launch prices will still be expensive. This means that once a spacecraft reaches Earth orbit, there is still a need for more cost effective methods of in-space transportation. That's where we come in. With our plasma thruster project we want to work on reducing the cost of space transportation further by cutting the mass and volume needed for spacecraft fuel, while increasing the transportation capabilities of the spacecraft. Cheaper robust spacecraft thrusters will serve as an enabler for daring low-cost robotic and ultimately new manned space missions. These missions could return samples from near-Earth asteroids, or support a more ambitious effort to return samples from Mars and beyond.
Plus, since our technology stems from our already scalable single-shot pulsed plasma accelerators, our plasma thruster design also promises to be scalable, including up to sizes large enough to support future large interplanetary manned space missions. We believe our thruster technology will be best suited for spacecraft with minimum masses of 100 kg (about 220 lbs) and larger."