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Does anyone want plasma rockets?


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If you don’t know what a plasma rocket is I will tell you about it. A plasma rocket is a rocket that runs on plasma instead of chemical fuel to stop the rocket from over heating it uses magnetic fields to stop the plasma from touching the actual rocket it self. (to stop the plasma from melting the rocket) Plasma rockets are also different in the way that unlike conventional rockets they don’t need insane amounts of fuel in a normal rocket 90% of the actual rocket is fuel were as in a plasma rocket you can have up 50% of the rocket as fuel this leaves more room for bigger payloads also it would only take a plasma rocket 26days to get to mars were as current rockets it takes 7 months this would make interplanetary travel quicker and more comfortable for the crew all and all this very theatrical and confusing to make right now but yes tell me what you think and what other theatrical rockets that are possible you might like to see

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At first i thought you were talking about Daedelus, and then you mentioned "28 days to mars" which makes me lean more towards VASMIR systems.

I'm almost certain both of these are in KSP2, and we've seen something that looks like Daedelus in trailer footage of KSP2. Now your claims about fuel mass i find suspect; because nothing iv'e seen about VASMIR or any other Plasma system would imply the fuel masses would be <90%. As for the time; part of that is mostly about transfer windows. And part of that is also about how much extra velocity you can impart after getting into orbit; because we haven't had a true heavy-lift vehicle since the Saturn V that's meant all proposed mars missions have had to use what's available on existing launchers.

Which often is in the multiples of single tonnes, and doesn't leave much for acceleration after doing your escape/transfer burn. However there's actually nothing preventing chemical rockets from reaching mars in much more reasonable timeframes; approaching 3 months. But it requires a big booster capable of multiples of 10 or even 100 tonnes to LEO, and refueling in orbit if possible.

All of that tangent aside, I'm pretty sure we'll see a variety of electrical, nuclear thermal and even fusion plasma engine options in KSP2. They all fall within the scope of the game, fit different roles at different times, and have their own unique and interesting design challenges.

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2 hours ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

stop the rocket from over heating

Actually, the "plasma engine" is used to accelerate propellant to extremely high speeds to increase the Isp of the thruster.  See the Hall effect thruster, MPD thruster, Dual-stage 4-grid, gridded ion thrusters, VASIMR, etc.  Overheating is not usually a problem with in-space chemical rockets, as far as I know.

2 hours ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

26days to get to mars

That was a study done by Ad Astra before they uncovered some of the problems with their VASIMR.  The rocket would need a nuclear reactor to provide the megawatts of power to do that.

Edited by Entropian
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12 hours ago, Entropian said:

That was a study done by Ad Astra before they uncovered some of the problems with their VASIMR.  The rocket would need a nuclear reactor to provide the megawatts of power to do that.

 

5 hours ago, Entropian said:

Forgot to mention, the nuclear reactor would also need football field-sized radiators to radiate the heat.

These are all great points about VASMIR and scaling electric propulsion past small probes generally in real life, but I don't think that any of them will be significant barriers in KSP2. 

We're already anticipating fusion based systems and orbital construction and infrastructure.

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The Dawn engine is a plasma engine.  With its high Isp you can get some serious dV for a small amount of fuel.

Edit:  Okay, maybe this isn't technically correct.  The blue exhaust is plasma, so it could technically be called a plasma engine, but it isn't an official Plasma propulsion engine.

Edited by RoninFrog
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10 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

These are all great points about VASMIR and scaling electric propulsion past small probes generally in real life, but I don't think that any of them will be significant barriers in KSP2.

I agree.  I wasn't trying to say that they shouldn't be in KSP2, I was just correcting a minor flaw in what the OP stated.  Scaling electric propulsion is something that definitely can be done, but IRL humans don't seem to be taking advantage of it.  KSP2 isn't all about realism.  Look at metallic hydrogen.

Pleeeaase don't start the MH argument in this thread...

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18 hours ago, Entropian said:

I agree.  I wasn't trying to say that they shouldn't be in KSP2, I was just correcting a minor flaw in what the OP stated.  Scaling electric propulsion is something that definitely can be done, but IRL humans don't seem to be taking advantage of it.  KSP2 isn't all about realism.  Look at metallic hydrogen.

Pleeeaase don't start the MH argument in this thread...

Figured as much, but i just wanted to point it out. And nah; that's way outta scope for this thread and I'm not gonna be that guy.  And yeahhhh; even Kilopower is basically just a upscaled RTG.....when we should've had full-scale reactors much sooner.

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On 7/4/2020 at 4:28 AM, RoninFrog said:

The Dawn engine is a plasma engine.  With its high Isp you can get some serious dV for a small amount of fuel.

Edit:  Okay, maybe this isn't technically correct.  The blue exhaust is plasma, so it could technically be called a plasma engine, but it isn't an official Plasma propulsion engine.

High ISP engines tend to have plasma as exhaust as the reaction mass will move fast so being hot. Orion pulse nuclear, metallic hydrogen and all sort of fusion all qualify here. 

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Plasma rocket engines can be any, even a chemical rocket engine that essentially emits plasma during combustion. NERVA nuclear engine also emits hydrogen plasma. A magnetic nozzle working together, fusion reactor will also use D-T plasma.

Edited by OOM
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On 7/9/2020 at 1:09 PM, OOM said:

Plasma rocket engines can be any, even a chemical rocket engine that essentially emits plasma during combustion. NERVA nuclear engine also emits hydrogen plasma. A magnetic nozzle working together, fusion reactor will also use D-T plasma.

No, they emit hot gas, but not ionized gas. They aren't plasma.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd love to see all kinds of electric propulsion, even the ones that DON'T have plasma exhaust (looking at you, resistojet and arcjet thrusters). Resistojet/Arcjet thrusters would make ideal high-thrust high-power RCS thrusters because they are basically propellant omnivores. I mean they'll run off basically anything that (as a gas) obeys the ideal gas law and is capable of being boiled without applying too much heat (sorry, mercury's probably a bad pick). Oh yeah and it's probably not a great idea to use a propellant that eats the heating element (resistojet) or electrodes (arcjet) or the heating chamber/nozzle walls (sorry, FLOX won't work).

Aside from those slight caveats, if you found some ice in deep space, chances are if you shovel it into the propellant tanks, heat slightly until liquid, filter out the rock dust, and then feed the result into an arcjet or resistojet, you'll get a thruster with ~1000s ISP and thrust that scales directly with power input.

Bonus if you use a monopropellant like Hydrazine, as the decomposition of Hydrazine yields hotter N2 and H2 gases, which means you're basically increasing the power input to the thruster by having some of the energy come from a chemical reaction. However, if this is done and the thruster was designed for another propellant, you'll likely have to operate the thruster at only partial propellant flow rate, because of the increased amount of heat that would build up in the heating chamber/nozzle otherwise.

Yes, I know I just made a post about non-plasma engines in a plasma-engine thread. However, they're all electric propulsion, so I hope it's close enough.

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