My Next Hot Rod

I wouldn't want to be behind you at a stop light.

Neither would I. The rolling friction alone would be more than the NEXT thruster. With a maximum thrust of 236 mN from 7.7 kW of power, somebody is going to sit at that light for a long time.

It still is very cool!

I bet on your next deep space adventure you'll be hankering for one and a couple of roll up solar panels..........."no gas for next the 5 light years..."

Oh you meant your interplanetary hot rod. My bad.

Very, very cool.

Thanks for the link Redfred my head is still spinning from all the info. I do remember at some point a high-school science teacher broaching the subjects of different drive systems for space travel, and I do believe he even tried to explain ion drives to those of us who were interested. And how much more effective in space they were then propellant fired systems, as well as how hard it would be to store enough fuel to get any where near a reasonable distance from Earth. Duke.

I like this idea (M2P2), but haven't heard much about it lately. It looks like you could get more bang for the buck letting the sun do the work.

http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/

An interesting idea that I'm certain has applications. One thing that has always puzzled me with using solar winds is that this seems like sailing with a rudderless flat bottom boat. Without a media like water to put a keel or rudder into this water, I do not see any method to select a direction to travel with solar wind. Tacking would not be possible. In contrast an ion drive can be vectored to allow controlled motion. Now I'm certain that interplanetary rocket scientists have thought about the feasibility of using solar winds.

I'm thinking that you can change the orientation of the magnetic field with respect to the solar wind and redirect the solar wind in a different direction. The change in momentum of the solar wind results in a force on the spacecraft analogous to the way that the deflection of air flow generates lift on an aircraft wing.

In orbit around the sun, of course, you have to thrust in a different direction than you want to go, speeding up to go "up" and slowing down to go "down".

I agree that you can't tack into the wind like you can with a sailboat.

Don't forget that this is a frictionless environment. If the net force vector does not intersect the center of mass then the craft will be torqued along with being pushed. This will change the orientation of the magnetic field to the solar wind.

Good point, angular momentum needs to be managed. I suspect that this is a problem with M2P2. I do know that an airfoil generates a torque due to the circulation induced into the air stream (which results in the wing tip vortices). The airplane solves this problem with a vertical stabilizer hanging out behind with a relatively long lever arm to generate a counter torque. An M2P2 spacecraft might need a very long tail!