Heavy rocket engines will come to replace electroplasma

Snecma has developed a new plasma engine, which may well be a substitute for chemical-type rocket engines from satellites and various devices for deep-space research, cnews.ru reports.

Specialists from Snecma, together with the French research agency CNRS, have successfully tested new European design - 20-kW electroplasma engine for spacecraft.

The power of the new engine is 13 times the 1.5-kW of the PPS 1350 Snecma engine, which is already being supplied to US and Russian spacecraft. The PPS 1350 is equal in power to the flame of a match, but it opened the way to creating a replacement for modern chemical rocket engines, which are not very suitable for long-term space missions.

The new 20-kW engine will allow geostationary satellites to reach final orbits if the required amount of electricity is provided by satellite platforms.

Currently, low-power PPS 1350 engines are used for small daily adjustments to the orbit of the device, which will increase its service life to 15 years. The small engine runs only 1-2 hours per day, while consuming only 10% of the electrical power generated by the satellite power plant. A spectacular demonstration of the potential of this technology was shown by the work of PPS 1350 on moving a probe launched by the European Space Agency SMART-1 from Earth's orbit to the lunar one. The power plant with a fairly small capacity took 2 of the year: from 2005 to 2007.

By combining greater power generation in spacecraft with more powerful electric plasma engines, traditional chemical engines can be completely abandoned. The calculations of Snecma specialists say that their new development allows significant savings in weight: up to 2000 kg on an ordinary satellite weighing 5500 kg.

Xenon gas and electricity from solar panels are used as fuel for electroplasma engines. This type of power plant has a very high efficiency, for example, PPS 1350 in the same conditions uses in 5-6 times less fuel than necessary thrusters chemical. Moreover, the efficiency of an electroplasma engine reaches 60% with a wide thrust range, using only the power from 5 to 22 kW.

Comments

[Igor]

It is necessary to create a NRE, and even for rocket engines, will be the first from the end.

[viruskvartirus]

You know it’s good to find your own, why did you decide that we were the first from the end ...) I’m somehow constantly confronted with what foreigners are doing from large projects in the field of nuclear energy, I’ll tell you this is a complete ass. Take, for example, a French pharmacon, there was such a project for a fuel laundering installation) the result when the acid corroded the shell and the fuel woke up in the pool do you know who they called to eliminate? Guess ...). Yes, a lot of things .. that's all there is to say about phobos-ground ... but remember how many shuttles made from 5 made to explode and people died? And theirs F-35, about which the creators themselves say, they wanted a child prodigy, they got it ... but there is a draft NRE read more ...

[Igor]

Quote: viruskvartirus

You know it's good to find your own, why did you decide that we are the first from the end ...)

Where did I write that we are the first from the end? But it turns out I did not read it, but I condemn it.

Quote: viruskvartirus

and there is a draft NRE read more ...

Nothing usually moves further than a project; we need results.

[alex-defensor]

NRE development was, moreover, it was planned to create engines of three power levels. The most powerful one at the design maximum was supposed to give out 10% of the light, i.e. 30000 km / s True, I did not have a chance to look at the materials on the question of how long it would take to accelerate to such a speed. Although it is possible to calculate, the maximum that our current technology can withstand is an overload of 100g.

However, the development of plasma engines is a good thing, we have done similar work, I don’t know the result.

[tronin.maxim]

Dauzh, technology does not stand still!

[timhelmet]

Something new in science - always nice

[Skiff]

The first prerequisites for creating plasma-ion engines arose more than a hundred years ago. At the end of the last century, intensive work began on the study of gases using an electric discharge.
Such work has been and is ongoing for a long time is nothing new.

[Ascetic]

In the early 1980s, Fakel began mass production of SPD-70 engines - the descendants of Eol. The first satellite with this engine, Geyser No. 1, was launched in 1982, and in 1994, the Hals-100 communications satellite was equipped with a new SPD-1 model. However, although the report on the successful testing of the Eol plasma engine in 1974 was completely openly published in the journal Space Research, foreign designers considered the SPD to be only an interesting theoretical development. Therefore, the demonstration to the representatives of NASA and JPL in 1991 of the working Fakel engines and the message that serial satellites are equipped with this kind of shock caused them a real shock (the Americans basically took the path of developing ion engines). It is not surprising that Fakel is now considered the world's leading manufacturer of electric rocket plasma engines. “Every third Russian satellite has our engine, and three of the five largest Western manufacturers of spacecraft buy SPD from us,” said Vyacheslav Murashko, director and general designer of the Fakel Design Bureau. “They, for example, are equipped with MBSat-1, Intelsat-X-02, Inmarsat-4F1 satellites.” Sending its satellite SMART-1 to the Moon, the European Space Agency chose for it as the engines the plasma PPS-1350, a joint development of the French company Snecma Moteurs, OKB Fakel and MIREA.
What awaits us in the near future? In the 1980s, a group at MIREA developed the next-generation engine, the Aton SPD. The divergence of the plasma beam in the SPD-100 is +/– 45 degrees, the efficiency is 50%, and the corresponding characteristics of the Aton SPD are +/– 15 degrees and 65%! It is not yet in demand, like our other engine, the two-stage SPD Mach with a modified field geometry - the designers still cost more simple SPD-100. Deep space requires engines with scales of 10-100 kW or even MW. Similar developments already exist - in 1976, the IAE made a 30 kW engine, and the Fakel in the late 1980s developed the SPD-290 with a 25 kW power for the Hercules space tug. In any case, the theory of such engines is constructed, therefore, within the framework of the classical SPD scheme, it is quite possible to bring the power up to 300 kW. For example, to a dual-lens hydrogen accelerator developed at the IAE in the late 1970s. This machine had a power of 5 MW and a flow rate of 1000 km / s. In any case, plasma engines will be on interplanetary spacecraft.
http://galspace.spb.ru/orbita/ximdv.htm

[CEO]

Thanks for the info. I was pleased. +1

[Rodney]

resembles this.

[AlexMH]

Guys, correct the name. EKTOplazma is from movies about ghosts :) The article writes about ELECTROplasma engines.

[Andriuha077]

Ectoplasm (from the Greek - “outside” and - “content”), also called plasmagel, is the outer layer of the cell cytoplasm, which has a higher density compared to its inner layer (endoplasm, also called plasmazole) [1]. The separation of the cytoplasm into ectoplasm and endoplasm is conditionally and to a greater extent expressed in protozoa, where the ectoplasm is involved in the mechanism of cell movement. [2] The ectoplasm does not contain granules and most organelles, [3], but, for example, kinetosomes are located in the ectoplasm of the shoe infusoria ( basal bodies), from which cilia extend. Well, further in the same vein.
It is called: our author said. Neither physics, nor biology.

[755962]

A brand new plasma engine has been built in the United States. It is more powerful, more compact and more economical than the existing NASA developments, according to the inventor, Russian scientist Oleg Batishchev.

Until recently, this was only possible in science fiction. The plasma engine breaks into a small box, but for all its unpretentiousness, it is able to put a small satellite into orbit, NTV reports.

Instead of fuel, ordinary nitrogen, the most common gas in the air. That is worth a penny. For several years, a revolution in space has been being prepared by Russian scientist Oleg Batishchev, a graduate of the Moscow Physics and Technology College. The principle that he came up with is so simple that Oleg jokingly created a plasma engine from a Coca-Cola bottle and a can.

The engine works like this: gas enters the tube. Under the influence of radio emission, a plasma appears, which is held and pushed by a magnetic field. So jet thrust is born.

It is still unknown when the first space tests of the engine will take place. Further tests cost a lot of money, and the US Air Force, which is now funding the program, has cut the budget. However, the inventor himself is sure that he will see his brainchild in space, because the future belongs to him: "If we are talking about massive flights to space, to the Moon, to Mars, then there is simply no alternative to electric motors."

Oleg Batishchev tried to offer his developments in Russia. But while domestic science, his plasma physics was not interested. So, most likely, the American satellite will be the first to launch its plasma engine into orbit.

A plasma engine for astronautics is like an electric one for a car - a fundamentally new type of energy, and it already exists. But it may take years before a plasma rocket goes, for example, to Mars. That is how much it can take to certify a new engine.

[Andriuha077]

So who is trying to invent whom all the time?
slovari.yandex.ru/~books/BSE/Plasma accelerators /
TSB, collector's edition.

[sprut]

At least for a couple of hours to look into the future of such things in 2189 ... How the world will be arranged, what technologies ...

[Kyrgyz]

most likely you will see the ashes and a handful of dying survivors

[Mad robot]

I have nothing against the article, but the word ectoplasm confuses: here are two definitions from the wiki
1Ectoplasm (from the Greek. - "outside" and - health. "Contents"), also called plasmagel - the outer layer of cell cytoplasm, which has a higher density compared to its inner layer
2Ectoplasm (Greek ektos, plasma - something “forming outside”) - in occultism and parapsychology - a viscous (usually light) substance of mysterious origin, which supposedly is secreted (through the nose, ears, etc.) by the medium’s organism and then serves basis for the further process of materialization (limbs, persons, figures) Maybe it meant "electroplasma"

[gridasov]

It is quite obvious that the wrong, or rather not productive, way of plasma development was chosen. Plasma must be used not as a directed flow creating a reactive driving force, but as an element of a directed magneto-dynamic interaction.
Let me give you an example. That wing, which is positioned as a device to ensure movement in a certain density of moving space, can be more productively used by another method. For those who know at least a little how the magnetic flux vectors are distributed on the surface, they know that a spherical surface is formed in the Faraday cage. vectors are directed outward. But it is not difficult to make sure that these vectors are directed to the center of this sphere. A wing formed by two hemispheres in one part of which the vectors are outward, and in the other inward they form a potential difference over the surfaces. But we only have one wing projection. This means that in order to obtain a sufficient potential difference at the level of stabilized breakdown, in the form of a plasma, it is necessary to create this potential difference in the obvious section of this wing. So it turns out that the wing should have quite obvious shapes in several projections. Of course, three are not enough. The answer is why UFOs have the shape of a "saucer", but we only see two real-life projections. The answer is that the person can fly more efficiently. We're using this new wing to generate excess energy.

It is probably worth adding that plasma is actually a "breakdown" between two or more differently charged (let's say so) media or surfaces. Hence, the conclusion is that using the known physical effects, with the help of plasma, it is possible to create not engines that create a jet thrust, but surfaces that create a directed magneto-dynamic effect. Which in itself is orders of magnitude more effective. The methods of obtaining an energy source of this potential difference and magnetodynamic force do not lie in creating a separate energy source, or rather not only, but also in using the very potential of the environment in which the object is located. Everything is quite simple, but not commensurably more effective.

[Honory]

Well done frogmen. I hope this gizmo will become a new step in space exploration.