With SpaceX continuing the testing phase for Starship and spreading enthusiasm for a truly crew flight to Mars, the exciting concept of a thrush rocket may have been created by physicist Fatima Ebrahimi at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab US Department of Energy (PPE). much more cost effective.
The feasibility of safe, stable propulsion systems that outperform chemical-based rocket engines on deep space missions, not only in our own solar system but perhaps even to a distant galaxy outside the Milk Trail, very much on the minds of astronauts.
Ion thrushes may have more stability, once the standard acceleration mode for imaginative sci-fi authors and now the preferred positioning engine of NASA scientists and engineers in their satellites, and they are much cheaper to work with but generate a small amount of effort for acceleration purposes. This is not just an operational option for a trip to the Red Planet where hundreds of tons of spaceships are being transported across the heavens.
The Princeton Ebrahimi team has developed a new concept that involves using the same basic cosmic equipment that helps burn solar flames out of our sun. These violent explosions are made up of charged atoms and particles called plasma, which are imprisoned within intense magnetic fields. Their findings were published on the online research site, Journal of Plasma Physics.
To harness this dynamic energy into an efficient propulsion system, Ebrahimi is aiming for a type of interaction called magnetic recombination, in which magnetic fields in high-charged plasma environments restructure automatically to reassemble, disassemble and reassemble.
The effect of this cyclic reaction is an impressive powerhouse of kinetic energy, thermal energy, and material acceleration. This phenomenon is not limited to stars, but also appears within the atmosphere of our planet and Tokamak fusion reactors, such as the PPPL National Spherical Torus Test.
This innovative thrush detects movement by emitting both plasma particles and magnetic bubbles called plasmoids, which increase power to the movement.
“Long-distance travel can take months or years because the specific pressure on chemical rocket engines is very low, so the craft will take a while to get up to speed,” explains Ebrahimi. on magnetic reconnection, we may have been able to complete long-distance missions in a shorter amount of time. While other gases require heavy gas, made with atoms like xenon, in this concept you can use any type of gas. you want.”
Magnetic thrushes work in ways like modern-day ion thrushes that are becoming increasingly common on a wide range of probes and spacecraft. These work by laying down a propellant base made up of heavy atoms such as xenon, then entering an electric field and causing them to accelerate. In Ebrahmi’s interesting concept, magnetic fields are employed for the acceleration work.
Currently, computer simulations derived from PPPL computers and the National Center for Scientific Computing for Energy Research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, show that magnetic recombination magnets can make acceleration theories ten times faster any electrical transmission systems in use today.
“This work has been inspired by previous fusion work and is the first time plasmoids and recombination have been proposed for space transfer,” Ebrahimi said. “The next step is to build a prototype! ”