Sci/Tech Ion engine enters space race

[The Helper]

Engineer Neil Wallace peers into a huge vacuum chamber designed to replicate - as far as possible - the conditions of space.

Cryogenic pumps can be heard in the background, whistling away like tiny steam engines.

Using helium gas as a coolant, they can bring down the temperature in the vacuum chamber to an incredibly chilly 20 Kelvin (-253C). The pressure, meanwhile, can drop to a millionth of an atmosphere.

This laboratory in a leafy part of Hampshire is where defence and security firm Qinetiq develops and tests its ion engines - a technology that will take spacecraft to the planets, powered by the Sun.

Find out more about it here.

 

[Andyoyo]

So is this method a lot more effective than rocket fueled? It says its still fueled so the electric current combines with the fuel to combust?

 

[BlargIAmDead]

So is this method a lot more effective than rocket fueled? It says its still fueled so the electric current combines with the fuel to combust?

Basically, but I think "combust" isn't quite the right word to use here, since nothing's actually burning or exploding. It's more "effective" if you want a smoother ride -- none of that rocking and rolling you get when you launch a Space Shuttle or a Saturn V, no getting squashed into your seat with g-forces -- and it uses less fuel than an ordinary chemical rocket. But an ion engine needs more electricity than a rocket engine would, and you have to run it for a long time to get up to any decent speed. I think the Deep Space 1 comet probe used ion engines, if you want to know more.

(For the Star Wars geeks out there, TIE fighters are supposedly named for having "Twin Ion Engines". But they're so fast compared with real-world ion spacecraft, that TIEs must run on wishes and meth.)