Crowd-Funded, Water-Propelled Satellites?

[Neil1993]

Recently, a friend of mine showed me a kickstarter for a new kind of satellite project. This one proposes launching a small cubesat with a water-propelled electric motor.

Their goal is to use this new kind of propulsion to put small, student-built satellites into deep space.

Should this technology prove feasible, it would make many space based applications much cheaper, such as meteorology, mapping, space weather monitoring and asteroid inspection, to name a few.

they have, at this time, met their funding goal, but there are still a few days left.

here's the link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/longmier/cat-launch-a-water-propelled-satellite-into-deep-s?ref=search

[jwenting]

It's rather cold in outer space, cold enough to freeze water...

[Neil1993]

Creating a container that can insulate water from the effects of outer space can be done and has been done. Rest assured, I'm sure these scientists have already thought about that.

[Faark]

But what does the KSP forum think about it? Is it worth backing? I doubt its the only CubeSat ion thruster, in development/on the market, so are their claims valid and would spaceflight actually benefit from it?

[Godot]

The big question IMHO is, how big the ISp of such an engine is (compared to "normal" ion thrusters, but also in numbers)

Edited December 11, 2013 by Godot

[DaveofDefeat]

I just wonder if solar panels will be enough to power this thing.

[Neil1993]

The big question IMHO is, how big the ISp of such an engine is (compared to "normal" ion thrusters, but also in numbers)

I found a lot of information here:

http://pepl.engin.umich.edu/thrusters/CAT.html

However, they do not provide an Isp. They do say that it can produce 2 mN of thrust on 10 W of power. They also had details, such as the fact that the operational life exceeded 20,000 hours, the amount of fuel was less than 2.5 Kg and the exhaust velocity was 20,000 m/s. From this, I calculated an Isp of around 5800 s. While this is considerably lower that other thrusters, the upside is that this type of engine is relatively light and it provides relatively high thrust for how little power it consumes. For instance, the NEXT system requires 7.7 kW for a maximum of 236 mN of thrust while this engine only requires 100 W for 200 mN of thrust.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Neil1993

[DonLorenzo]

I found a lot of information here:

http://pepl.engin.umich.edu/thrusters/CAT.html

However, they do not provide an Isp. They do say that it can produce 2 mN of thrust on 10 W of power. They also had details, such as the fact that the operational life exceeded 20,000 hours, the amount of fuel was less than 2.5 Kg and the exhaust velocity was 20,000 m/s. From this, I calculated an Isp of around 5800 s. While this is considerably lower that other thrusters, the upside is that this type of engine is relatively light and it provides relatively high thrust for how little power it consumes. For instance, the NEXT system requires 7.7 kW for a maximum of 236 mN of thrust while this engine only requires 100 W for 200 mN of thrust.

Take away from this that you need more energy per fuel unit to attain the higher Isp