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[-] artifex@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

Nah nothing fun, just tanks of propellant.

[-] Bravo@eviltoast.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"We had been operating relatively conservatively, in how many people we were allowing ourselves to hire and capital expenditures," Romo said. "This will allow us to release a little bit of that conservatism and lean into some stuff like electric propulsion and potentially other vehicles that are going to allow us to grow long-term."

(Emphasis mine)

He said this but then never really elaborated. This was the only part of the article I wanted to read more about. It sounded like he was talking about something akin to the EmDrive, but my understanding was that the EmDrive had been debunked as a measurement calibration error, so I'm curious WTF he's talking about.

[-] Bimfred@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Ion and plasma drives. They're electric and work very well. All the thrust of a hefty fart, but high specific impulse allows them to burn for a long time, so they're great for maneuvering in the vacuum.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And far more efficient than chemical propulsion.

[-] Bimfred@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

But exactly because of that, they don't have yeet. Long periods of low thrust are great for long duration missions, like satellites, stations and interplanetary probes, awful for a TLI burn.

[-] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 3 points 1 week ago

Also, is a bit more complicated to use in kerbal, because the manoeuvring node expects strong instantaneous impulse.

this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
36 points (100.0% liked)

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