Yeah i like these thought experiments, and know that the creators probably havnt thought about it in that much detail but hey its still good wholesome geek fun.
I doubt its an ion drive, as the accelerations are tiny, the advantage of ion drives is they can burn for long periods of time, for example one of our modern rockets fueled by solid or liquids burn for a matter of minutes but have tremendous accelerations, an ion drive is little more than the gentlest of pushes... but when tried on one of NASA deep space probes could burn for 14 months or there abouts. and turn on and off which a solid rocket cant. Although an ion drive is advanced for us, it would be pretty useless for Destiny.
to my knowledge, which isnt quite up to ancient standards i cant see how super heated plasma can be used? any they collect would probably cool relatively quickly, and all propulsive techologies i can think of off hand that would be used on a space craft other then a solar sail rely on either rapidly expanding (eg heated or exploding in a controlled way which may well result in plasma being formed) (from newtons 2nd law of motion F=ma) or basically squirting something out of the back such as gas jets used on eva packs (newtons third law: every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction) and if theyre just squirting plasma out of the back then it would be a lot safer to squirt something a little less dangerous to keep on board.
I doubt its an ion drive, as the accelerations are tiny, the advantage of ion drives is they can burn for long periods of time, for example one of our modern rockets fueled by solid or liquids burn for a matter of minutes but have tremendous accelerations, an ion drive is little more than the gentlest of pushes... but when tried on one of NASA deep space probes could burn for 14 months or there abouts. and turn on and off which a solid rocket cant. Although an ion drive is advanced for us, it would be pretty useless for Destiny.
to my knowledge, which isnt quite up to ancient standards i cant see how super heated plasma can be used? any they collect would probably cool relatively quickly, and all propulsive techologies i can think of off hand that would be used on a space craft other then a solar sail rely on either rapidly expanding (eg heated or exploding in a controlled way which may well result in plasma being formed) (from newtons 2nd law of motion F=ma) or basically squirting something out of the back such as gas jets used on eva packs (newtons third law: every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction) and if theyre just squirting plasma out of the back then it would be a lot safer to squirt something a little less dangerous to keep on board.
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