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An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. An ion thruster creates a cloud of positive ions from a neutral gas by ionizing it to extract some electrons from its atoms. The ions are then accelerated using electricity to create thrust.
Current EHD thrusters are far less efficient than conventional engines. [15] An MIT researcher noted that ion thrusters have the potential to be far more efficient than conventional jet engines. [16] Unlike pure ion thruster rockets, the electrohydrodynamic principle does not apply in the vacuum of space. [17]
The gridded ion thruster is a common design for ion thrusters, a highly efficient low-thrust spacecraft propulsion method running on electrical power by using high-voltage grid electrodes to accelerate ions with electrostatic forces.
Car engines breathe external air to combust their fuel, and (via the wheels) react against the ground. As such, the only meaningful way to interpret "specific impulse" is as "thrust per fuelflow", although one must also specify if the force is measured at the crankshaft or at the wheels, since there are transmission losses.
Such a thruster often generates the source plasma using radio frequency or microwave energy, using an external antenna. This fact, combined with the absence of hollow cathodes (which are sensitive to all but noble gases ), allows the possibility of using this thruster on a variety of propellants, from argon to carbon dioxide air mixtures to ...
Illustration of the right-hand rule for the Lorentz force, cross product of an electric current with a magnetic field. The working principle involves the acceleration of an electrically conductive fluid (which can be a liquid or an ionized gas called a plasma) by the Lorentz force, resulting from the cross product of an electric current (motion of charge carriers accelerated by an electric ...
The arrow-shaped car, under development since 2008, is powered by a jet engine and will be fitted with an additional rocket engine. [2] The initial goal is to exceed the current speed record of 763 mph (1,228 km/h), with the vehicle believed to be able to achieve up to 1,000 miles per hour (1,609 km/h).
This is the kind of thrust one would get from an ionic thruster. EHD calculation On the other hand, the EHD thrust is given by the well established equation F=id/k (Refer to Sigmond's scientific papers), k=ion mobility coefficient (in air=2E-4), d=air gap, i=current F= 3.33E-3*0.03/2E-4 = 0.5N, which is what one actually gets from an ionocraft ...