How to use electricity to accelerate rocket exasust.

Stage 1 - http://phys.org/news/2013-02-fujifilm-t ... erial.html

Layered around rocket motor body assembly providing
A-Low weight Heat sink
B-Extra electric power and lots of it.

How can this be directed into thrust with the least weight added?


is rocket exaust plasma?

Can you ditch half of vasimr and just use rocket exaust as the plasma source?
then add energy with the antenna?

you could put it in the disk and rotate it with a rotor. inside of the ship ionized gaz and the rotor turns opposite direction , u could open exhost from the disc shaped ship and throw the gaz.. when the gaz finished u could close exhousts throw new ionized gaz to chamber to stop the turning rotor and prodicing violocity again an again.

This would draw more energy than it produced, the induction, and acceleration fields would be much higher load than the thermocouple, which would basically act like a solid state heat exchanger. However, this is one of your more elegant ideas, with a little polish, and some actual numbers to prototype with, it might even be testable. What's the fuel, Helium?

But in space (solar)power is cheap and free. Trading energy for propellant efficiency is a no-brainier.

Fuel could be any neutral gas or plasma. Everything from gases to the solar wind.

The electric spark give ignition to the fuel for intial thrust to maintain 100% combustion for maximum accleration of launch in its full time of exhaust in engines.

I know, I was just refuting the idea that this setup would somehow accelerate the reaction mass, and generate more power than you'd need (Indicative of Sig's bootstraping mindset)when AFAIK, thermodynamics are still in effect.

Indeed, in solar space, trading energy for propellant efficiency is a pretty damned good idea regardless of what you want to accelerate through space. Form the rough scale of the image, and assuming Helium as a propellant, I'd say it might be a nice translunar drive.

A traditional rockets exhaust very hot, could you have chemicals in the rocket, that allow beamed power (via laser etc) to accelerate the rocket exhaust?

One laser is space, one on the ground , 1 rocket could be as strong as 2?

There are a couple of teams that are working on MHD rocket "afterburners" BTW.

All right, SIGMA, you cheeky bastard, I just realized you ripped off that entire graphic from the VASIMIR project, I just saw it sans labels on Futurescape with James Woods, and Michio [censored] Kaku. If you're going to do that, at least give credit.

click the image,

I didn't just give credit "I LINKED IT!"

So just take this and add power in rather than making it?

http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2010-4305

Accelerate the model rocket engine exhaust?