Comment on Anon likes Space Jam
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours agoIt took the deep space 1 probe (which only weighed 373kg) 73.5 kilos of xenon through an ion engine to get a delta v of 4.1km/s.
So even if you turned the whole cargo bay into fully ionized plasma and somehow shot it out in a well directed beam, I seriously doubt it would cause any noticeable change in the trajectory of a million metric ton galaxy class starship
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Ionizing a gas for propulsion is a very different method of using gas for propulsion than evacuating a pressurized area.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Yes and no, technically the gas was pressurized and let out for propulsion. Its just that after the gas is initially pushed into the thruster, we rip off electrons to make the gas into positive ions which can be further accelerated by an electromagnetic field potential before getting ejected.
You are getting thrust from the depressurization but also from the electromagnetic acceleration of the thruster. The point is that it is more thrust than you’d get from just gas expansion alone and it still would provide basically no delta v for such a massive object.