Had to Ask

Is ATO going to make use of a reversed electrodynamic tether? Just curious.

Vewy, wewy gud question. Hadn't occured to me, but now that you mention it...

The silence is deafening. C'mon guys.. just say nay.

What's a reversed electrodynamic tether anyway?

Just curious.

DKH

I suppose I mean reversed polarity. Typically a tether would generate electricity, however, reversed it would actually be repulsed outward.

Hmm. Interesting idea. I haven't calculated it out in detail, but my hunch is that this wouldn't work. Electrodynamic tethers work because they are buzzing through the Earth's magnetic field at orbital velocity. At a standstill, they give you nothing, and at very low speeds, they don't give you very much. Still, if what little thrust they generated was more than the drag on the airship, they could generate a continuous acceleration (although you'd probably still need to give the airship an initial boost with some more conventional method of propulsion).

My suspicion is that the T/D would be nowhere even close to positive, but sometime when I've got a spare moment or two I might try to figure it out for real. It would be amazing if something like that worked!

What caused the initial question of this thread? As far as I remeber the .pdf about the ATO explicitly says that it will use an ion engine.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

it would have to be the mother of all ion engines to propel something as big as ATO, and weight is a factor. I'm really just guessing here but I have a hunch there's more the one thing involved in propulsion

Hello, bad_astra,

I took your initial question as a question for information. The informations JP Aerospace provide says that they will use an ion drive.

So I wonder where you read something about JP Aerospace using a tether.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Who says I did?