How NASA Is Reinventing Space Travel

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I remember reading that the now cancelled JIMO mission (a nuclear powered orbiter to Jupiter's moons) was supposed to use all the existing supplies of xenon. Using a less rare noble gas might be better for the long term.

This is a fantastic video about ion propulsion! I would like to mention about the Ion Propelled Vehicles shown online and on my channel. The series of crafts have a greater than one to one thrust ratio, with onboard power... No other ion thrusters that I am aware of are within an order of magnitude of lifting their power supplies vertically, normally ion thrusters are many orders of magnitude away from a 1 to 1 TWR. There are some videos of the crafts carrying onboard propellant tanks as well. They will have a tremendous ISP in space since they operate at very high voltages. It is surprising the project currently gets so little funding.

Like you spoke briefly, the iodine is the better gas, it is solid and doesn't need a pressured container

May the force be with you. 🧿🙏

Very cool, good stuff man (I actually understood most of it). Thanks.

Amazing ion engine

Great video...👍

Actually that ion engine goes back even farther- to the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter where it would be nuclear powered and send a huge probe from moon to moon doing science. It did turn out to be radically more complicated and expensive than was desired in the 00s, but at least it found a new home!

I realize that my question has nothing to do with ion thrusters, but how do these various probes and satellites deal with space dust and micro-meteors? Have you ever produced a video about this topic?

I propose to enhance the advantages of ion and similar engines by placing fairly massive platforms along the trajectory of space transport. The task of these platforms is to collect, produce, accumulate energy to generate a powerful electromagnetic field at the moment of passage of transport, so that the result of the interaction of the fields of the platform and transport is the exchange of movement impulses, acceleration/deceleration/change of direction of transport. Approximately the same thing that happens during a gravitational maneuver when spacecraft fly near planets.

what about placing big mass stations in earth orbit with ion drives that harvest additional energy via solar panels (or nuclear or both) and convert that to rotational energy, building up more and more momentum. the , for longer range missions this built up momentum could be transferred to a smaller spacecraft and flung away like a slingshot would. (details on "docking" would need to be worked out). Returning spacecrafts could slow down by transferring momentum back to the rotator station, so less energy would need to be burned off in reentry and energy could be preserved for next "takeoff"

I would love to see more exotic propulsion systems in near future, ION engines offer not that big of a step up of ISP compared to the chemical rockets (around 10 times at best), at the cost of miniscule amounts of thrust. For example there already exist technology that if optimized for propulsion would create high ISP electric drive: Helion Energy reactors. They are firing rings of plasma at velocities of 300 km/s which would give it ISP 6x higher than that of the best ION engines. Ofcourse there is a question of scaling it down to be fit for reasonably sized space-craft, but it could be a big step up in terms of spacecraft propulsion.

I can't wait to see Gateway crossing the Moon's disk once a week or so. What will the flerfs "think" of that?

I'm so ready for some REAL STARSHIPS! LETSGOOO!!

Doc, I do have a silly question. Gold is a rather dense material, in solid form, and still dense compared to Xeon when vaporized. It's also a Noble Material. Yes, we would need to supply the energy to vaporize the Gold. But, given the volume savings of solid fuel, et cetera, I think it would be viable. And Gold is a LOT more common than Xeon.

One major concern I have with using ion engines on manned spacecraft is the Van Allen Belts. I’m not an engineer; I’m a geologist, but it seems to me that the slow acceleration of ion engines would leave people in the VABs way to long. Perhaps someone out there has a better perspective on this area than I do. I would love to hear from you, thanks.

at around 6:35 you discuss the speed of the deep space 1 probe. 725m/s sounds exceptionally slow for objects in the solar system, what is its speed relative too? It flew past 9969 Braille at a speed that was intended to be 56,000km/h (15.6km/s) - Wikipedia.

A bank of these emgines could be built and put in space to be used on different craft. Think of a ring of these engines, say 500 of them that are used only to fly between the moon and earth like a space tug. 500 mice are a lot stronger than 3. Even if it's a smaller number, these thrusters could be much better if they used a nuclear energy source, (or multiple small nuclear sources). It wouldn't need anything accept guidance (maybe not even that) and structure to attach to the space ship.

Apogee and Perigee are terms specific to orbits around Earth. The lunar equivalents are Apolune and Perilune. There are different terms for every body in the solar system ( 'jov' for Jupiter, 'sol' for the sun etc...)