Flat-Panel Ion Thrusters

www.newscientist.com...

Conventional ion thrusters used for manoeuvring vehicles in space are roughly fridge-sized and work by accelerating gas ions to generate force in the opposite direction. But they waste a lot of gas and are limited in lifetime because the accelerated ions damage the engine.

Their nanothrusters, say the Michigan team, get around these problems. Each consists of a small chamber of fluid with electrodes inside and a vent at the top. Above that vent more electrodes generate a powerful electric field.

The fluid contains nanoparticles just tens of nanometres across that are ionised by electrodes in the chamber. Those charged ions are accelerated by the electric field and ejected from the vent, producing thrust.

These nanothrusters can be used in large numbers on flat panels with micro-scale fuel delivery channels. The panels would cover large areas of spacecraft and in the drag-free space environment give all vehicles fine and efficient control.

The inventors hope the flat-panel thrusters will reduce the cost of spacecraft thanks to their efficiency and light weight, cutting the cost of launching vehicles into space.

Finally, a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of space exploration. This is exacting what we need for lightweight and fast space travel such as on satellites. Lets all hope that this technology will be developed further to become practical, maybe later on it will even work in cars.

Now that the secret behind torsion field physics has been solved by Enterprise Mission's Richard C. Hoagland, perhaps the new model could be applied to this technology.

The reaction would by occurring within the plane of rotation, the mechanism is available already via the spacecraft itself - which could be rotated.

Of course, rotating the propulsion mechanism itself is always preferable under the new model. There are however several ways of doing such a thing.

The boost in energy would be reason enough to at least try this in a test that is available to the public and not classified. Public Proof of Concept if you will...

If Richard C. Hoagland and Co. ever produce a scientifically testable prototype engine from this "secret" they discovered in Torsion physics, and it can be explicitly proven that it is indeed Torsion physics at work, I will eat my hat. If I had one. I guess that means I would have to eat my hair... Hmm

On second thought, I think I'll go buy a hat today.


Anyway, this invention is pretty cool. Nanotechnology is going to bring about a lot of scientific revolutions in science (durr).


[edit on 28-8-2008 by OnionCloud]

reply to post by OnionCloud


They aren't building one, no one said they were. Hoagland has however, discovered a provable method of employing and testing for the effect caused by a torsion field.

This isn't "Face on Mars stuff" this is him actually showing us why he won the Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science - Because he's a Genius, albeit eccentric, but most geniuses are