Redesign of Hall effect thruster

[PB666]

http://www.sciencealert.com/this-plasma-engine-could-get-humans-to-mars-on-100-million-times-less-fuel

Its basically a way of firing and channeling electrons so that they do not erode the materials, i creasing the overall life of the thruster.

[Scotius]

Good news for space probes. For the purposes of manned flight? Not so much. Its still very weak, slowly accelerating energy hog.

[sgt_flyer]

Here's the paper the scientists released for those who want more technical infos

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/107/17/10.1063/1.4932196

From what i could understand, their current prototype is a bit less efficient than a classic hall thruster, but they have yet to create a fully optimised design (though the prototype allowed them to test for stability and research peak magnetic field efficiency) .from that, they gain a HT with a much longer lifetime + it opens up the possibility of increasing the thruster's output without accelerating the degradations)

So guess it's a good proof of concept protoype built upon research & experimentation

Now they will go on to build a version much closer to a usable one

Edited October 28, 2015 by sgt_flyer

[Streetwind]

Yeah, in layman's terms the paper states:

"We developed a Hall Effect thruster variant that performs somewhat worse than competing designs, but project that it should have a much longer lifetime because reasons. We have verified the fundamental functionality, and are planning to build a full test article at a later time. We also hope that one will perform slightly better, but we don't think we can fully match other designs in pure performance with this technology. This is about improving engine lifetime. How much? We don't know yet, that's why we're building the test article."

As usual, how the news website manages to get from that to "humans to Mars on 100 million times less fuel" is anyone's guess...

[fredinno]

Yeah, in layman's terms the paper states:

"We developed a Hall Effect thruster variant that performs somewhat worse than competing designs, but project that it should have a much longer lifetime because reasons. We have verified the fundamental functionality, and are planning to build a full test article at a later time. We also hope that one will perform slightly better, but we don't think we can fully match other designs in pure performance with this technology. This is about improving engine lifetime. How much? We don't know yet, that's why we're building the test article."

As usual, how the news website manages to get from that to "humans to Mars on 100 million times less fuel" is anyone's guess...

Current Orion Mars plans involve Ion Drives.

Also, I wonder if Ion Drive space tugs could become a potential SLS mission with SLS Block Is refueling them, and launching clusters of space tugs. It would be a good near term use for ARM technology.