Why bother developing electric rocket engines?
All of the energy for producing thrust in chemical rockets comes from the chemical energy stored in the chemicals. The problem is that this really isn’t very much energy so we have to use a lot of fuel. Consider the moon rocket, 95 percent of its take off weight was fuel. If we could find a way to get more energy into the fuel we’d need less of it. By adding energy from an external source we can pump as much energy into the propellant as we want. In so doing it’s possible to reduce the amount of propellant needed for a given task by as much as a factor of ten. That can be enough to more than make up for the weight of the power supply required to provide the electricity. Sounds great… then why doesn’t the space shuttle use electric engines? First, electric rocket engines only provide low thrust. MPD thrusters are the super heavyweights in the electric propulsion world and a typical one (8 inches in diameter and six long) only produces 50 pounds of thrust. In space this is fine because
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- The SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) cannot be shut down, does that make it less safe than using liquid rocket engines?
- Can I run steam engines along side my electric ones?
- Can I run steam engines along side my electric ones?
- Why bother developing electric rocket engines?
