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"Cast your name into deep space in style!"

Interesting approach, but with 99.9% probability they will miserably fail (at least in terms of their time schedule) simply because the technology is untested. I haven't read the refs (which miss by the way important works of E. Ahedo et al. on magnetic nozzle acceleration by ambipolar effects), but 1. using water means that you produce oxygen radicals which will erode chamber walls (ionisation efficiency is not 100% and experimental tests haven't been performed yet). 2. Electronic excitation (and radiation), rotational excitation, vibrational excitation, and dissociation are all processes which consume energy and reduce ionisation efficiency drastically. 3. It is a miniaturised Helicon thruster. Theoretical analysis probably does not consider near field effects. Far field models are probably not applicable due to the size of the thruster. I expect some surprises during thruster testing. In any case - good luck!

Apparently, there is only one qualification constraint regarding CubeSat propulsion which is related to volatile propellant. Since they use water as propellant and are also the owner of the CubeSat it is actually up to them how they qualify their thruster. Given that it is also possible to qualify the thruster within 18 months - since they define what "qualification" means.

"And according to his calculations, improvements in short-pulse laser systems could make this form of thruster more than 40 times as efficient as even the best of today's ionic propulsion systems that push spacecraft around. "

Dejan please have a look at this also ...

while the nuclear reaction seems to be sound at first view, I am not so sure how this would work: "Electromagnetic forces push the target and the alpha particles in the opposite directions, and the particles exit the spacecraft through a nozzle, providing the vehicle's thrust. "

Ionic fluids in thrusters for microsatellites. Here also a link to a paper on the topic: .pdf

Funded!!!

"Because, quite simply, we think ours will be better!"

"Right hand rules!"

Engineer Roger Shawyer's controversial EM Drive thruster jets back into relevancy this week, as a team of researchers at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on the seemingly impossible tech.

I like this just because it will end up on Thijs' desk :D

Interesting that the new comes in... Yahoo Finance :). Another more complete article http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/11/nasa-eagleworks-has-tested-upgraded.html

Why not power an airplane with an ion thruster?

The usefulness of having a robust trajectory :) ... They have to wait 6 more years for another date with Venus ...

"optimised trajectory" of course not, robust definitely! It was the subject of my paper presented at the AAS (the one in San Diego) "Designing robust interplanetary trajectories subject to one temporary engine failure". The problem here is that they do not have enough fuel for a correction maneuver that would allow to come back to Venus earlier, and break for a VOI. A robust scenario could have alloted the best amount of fuel and time to be able to recover from almost all possible unplanned events. In the paper, I introduce some confidence regions such that I get the robust control for p% chance of mission success in case m% chance of problem with the propulsion system.

You should run your method on this scenario and see if you could get a trajectory with a shorter come back time using the same spacecraft.... would be a big selling point for a new trajectory design approach

More funding for helicon double layer. I am wondering how much EADS is contributing to it? Must be Lainé. 

he new SR-72 will use a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) that will employ the turbine engine at lower speeds, and use a scramjet at higher speeds. A scramjet engine is designed to operate at hypersonic velocities by compressing the air through a carefully designed inlet, but needs to be traveling supersonic before it is practical to begin with. So far research projects from NASA, the Air Force and other Pentagon entities have not been able to solve the problem of transitioning from the subsonic flight regime, through hypersonic flight with a single aircraft. Same problem as Reaction Engines is trying to solve, so I am not sure whether they actually cracked it. In any case, nice pictures. Not sure why the exhaust color is purple in color. Its not running on Argon I believe.

Weird article. Intermediate thruster stage (Ramjet) is missing. Scramjet has supersonic combustion and a normal turbine delivers subsonic flows. Even with afterburner - the Scramjet inlet would decelerate the flow down to subsonic velocity with "normal" subsonic combustion. The only thing I can imagine is that the Scramjet stage is bi-functional and covers both, subsonic and supersonic combustion. But the article doesn't say anything about it.

This concept for a "soft-robotic rover with electrodynamic power scavenging" comes from Cornell University, and NASA has awarded it a grant under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to hoist itself up from TRL 1 to TRL 2.

Some people answering the question 'What's cooler than blasting space debris with lasers...?'.

If it fires in both directions, can we align it such that it deorbits two debris with one shot?

:) the idea of having this method for debris removal is actually an ACT one from Claudio Bombardelli (ACT RF in MAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-beam_shepherd). This is just a technological device to implement it so that the system on board is simplified (i.e. instead of two engines, you get away with one and a weird nozzle) Marcus, you cannot align it to get rid of two debris as you need to keep the spacecraft close to the debris as this is a long duration acion. One of the two would drift away (can only follow one!)

it works! No, of course it doesn't. I've wasted your time just posting this.