High Performance Electric Aircraft Propulsion

[K^2]

There are a lot of pipes, though. And I'm not sure what you mean by "purely space". Once in orbit, definitely. During ascent? I'm not so sure.

I'm really annoyed at atmosphere. Especially that property where at certain altitude it's of no help, but it's still too thick to accelerate without losses. I really wish there was something we could do about that. Then we wouldn't need any fancy propulsion or power sources.

[Nuke]

by purely space i mean, far enough out of the atmosphere where the reactor is exposed to better vacuum than it can get from a chamber on the ground.

[K^2]

By then, hopefully, you have most of your orbital speed, and TWR isn't much of an issue, anyhow. Like I said, it does look good for orbital applications. But building an actual ascent rocket with it would have been more exciting.

[Idobox]

EHD thruster are very efficient. I found a source citing 68N/kW, with 100MW, that would mean 6800kN of thrust in the lower atmosphere. Once out of the atmosphere, they can either be used as crappy ion drives, or left alone since they don't weight much.

http://lae.mit.edu/uploads/LAE_report_series/2012/LAE-2012-008-T.pdf

[Sillychris]

Any idea where I can get some of these for my super villain lair?

K^2, what would you have in your lair, and where would it be?