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@CL207 use traditional combustion to get into orbit, transition to this once in space?

@CL207 I'm guessing the attractive quality here is efficiency Not needing to have a huge nuclear reactor and a ton of power to produce thrust

@CL207 Yeah well what's even the maximum theoretical power density here. Are we ever expecting high performance?

Once you are in space, it does not matter tbh. These drives are highly efficient meaning they produce thrust without having to consume/bring a lot of mass. The bigger the mass you have to move, the harder it is to move it and more energy is required. These and some advanced version of these will be humanities future exploration drive for the next ~50-70 years. Acceleration, mass, fuel requirement and time are 4 constants. Conventional rockets do not have the lasting efficiency to attain a sufficiently large dv, they go fast quickly but once you run out of fuel they dont' go faster. There is a calculation in which a much slower but more efficient drive on a long enough mission (say anything other than the moon) can get there much faster as they can accelerate for half the journey and then accelerate in the opposite direction to slow down for the rest. Mass is a key component, because the more mass you need to push the harder/slower it will be so if you have highly efficient drives that sip fuel this will heavily affect low mass ships. There was plenty of research done on propulsion systems back in the 1970s and 80s, we do know (or at least knew) how to make these things or at least know the theories behind them but there was no incentive to do so because there was no point. The reality of space travel and exploration is that the biggest problem is getting off this particular rock. Once you're off this rock, or you can get off it for a reasonable cost then you're in business. We didn't have the capability to do so cheaply (until spacex came around). The most likely future is ships built in orbit with some sort of highly efficient drive while you have conventional chemical rockets boosting material up to orbit. These ships will never land anywhere and will just go orbit to orbit. It's extremely unlikely that we will have ships that dock on earth and then fly to another planet just because the drive has to have enough thrust to get off earth's gravity well and then make the journey to mars faster than with a split setup like this, or at least we won't have these for 100 years or so.

@CL207 still just a fancy ion fan lol

@CL207 i’d like to see you lift and hold a pen for 8 months straight can’t do that?… need a small break each day? figured

@CL207 Wouldn’t a small constant amount of thrust in space still have a great effect on speed/time over years? Maybe not for take off but in between

@CL207 whats the actual thrust-to-weight ratio look like rn? always feels like these things are decades away from being useful

@CL207 The pencil comparison is perfect It’s always a cool render then reality hits with a single digit of thrust

@CL207 remember the em drive lmao

@CL207 space is really big

@CL207 "useful idiots" x.com/EDegurecha383/status/208…