MHD Versus An Ideal Power Source We Do Not Even Have... (probably still fails lol)

[Spacescifi]

 

So a new video by this guy touts MHD and other plasma research as good enough today to manage an SSTO.

 

I am skeptical, since otherwise someone WOULD have done it for money by now.

 

I read elsewhere that the power required to lift a mere ton would require several gigawatts.

MHD is more or less an ion aircraft, which requires turning air around the hull into plasma so that the air can be moved over the hull fast enough to generate lift.

 

Questions: Assuming we had a compact multi-gigawatt power source to install on an MHD SSTO, how would the air plasma surrounding the SSTO even look?

My guess? The hull would glow... from the heat, and the air near it also would, perhaps a broad hull width plume forming opposite the direction of acceleration.

I presume even with the multi-gigawatt power source that is compact that we do not even have.... you would need a way of cooling the hull so it won't melt.

Which means means using chilled tanks of propellant as heat sinks likely, likely to cool the hull itself too. Leading to a maximum weight where due to melting limits of hull/MHD, you can only build he SSTO so heavy or you will melt and crash it.... unless you start using propellant, but you're suppose to save that for high atmosphere and space travel... otherwise it defeats the whole point of MHD.

 

EDIT: The comment in the video about tge MHD craft using it's own lasers to ionize the air around it I found amusingly ironic.

 

Because doing that is a GREAT way to blind anybody at the launch site watching it lift off lol.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

problem is always power. the list of super engines we have on the drawing board and the manufacturing capability to build is rather long. but they all want for a power system that could feed it. it seems to be the limiting factor in all plasma/ion engines and what keeps them from really scaling up.

if we had unlimited free power yea you could to at atmo plasmacraft. i mean its kind of been done before. 

and yes the most interesting thing about that plane is its power supply.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Nuke

[Spacescifi]

8 minutes ago, Nuke said:

problem is always power. the list of super engines we have on the drawing board and the manufacturing capability to build is rather long. but they all want for a power system that could feed it. it seems to be the limiting factor in all plasma/ion engines and what keeps them from really scaling up.

if we had unlimited free power yea you could to at atmo plasmacraft. i mean its kind of been done before. 

 

 

Yes... but I am hinting that EVEN if we had the power we are still not off to the races as it were.

The heavier an SSTO is, the more heat it's super duper power source will generate in the process of giving it lift.

At some point you will break the hull from heat damage, so you simply cannot build however large you want with MHD  unless yoy are using some other technology to assist it to make up for that. Rockets could fill that a role but at the cost of making the MHD virtually useless deadweight.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

there is that stupid (but in a good way) hybrid airship to orbit design. but thats a kilometer long flying wing filled with hydrogen, covered with thin film solar panels, powered by plasma engines and also using some kind of ion based drag reduction technology.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Nuke