[Brett66]

I wonder what the full potential of this technology could be if we got serious and invested a couple billion a year in the development of ion propulsion. Deep Space1 put out 90 millinewtons of thrust, this is putting out around .9 Newtons of thrust with an ISP of >6000. Could we get this past 10,000-20,000 ISP with around 100 Newtons of thrust? A technology definitely worth investigating.

[Michael Barnes]

I wonder what the full potential of this technology could be if we got serious and invested a couple billion a year in the development of ion propulsion. Deep Space1 put out 90 millinewtons of thrust, this is putting out around .9 Newtons of thrust with an ISP of >6000. Could we get this past 10,000-20,000 ISP with around 100 Newtons of thrust? A technology definitely worth investigating.

What the hell did you just say?!

English Please?

[RadioAstronomer]

Would be a wowser. :-)

[billbears]

I wonder what the full potential of this technology could be if we got serious and invested a couple billion a year in the development of ion propulsion

And just who would do this 'investing'? The taxpayer? Granted I think it's an interesting and cool idea, but is it something I want the government to take care of?

[Centurion2000]

Could we get this past 10,000-20,000 ISP with around 100 Newtons of thrust? A technology definitely worth investigating

It would be slow but extremely efficient for long flights for light spacecraft ..... exciting times indeed ....

We could catch and retrieve Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft with these.

[wideminded]

this is putting out around .9 Newtons of thrust

I figured .3 Newtons with power of 12 KW and velocity of 80000 meters per second, but maybe I made a mistake. Oddly, I first read about ion engines in the Weekly Reader, an elementary school publication. That was a very long time ago. Let's just say it has taken several decades and we are just getting to 1 Newton of thrust.

[stylin_geek]

You have to remember this is a single engine, what would happen if they were clustered?

[r9etb]

Could we get this past 10,000-20,000 ISP with around 100 Newtons of thrust? A technology definitely worth investigating.

Probably -- but it'd take a megawatt of power to do it....

Note that this put out about 1 N using 12,000 kW of power.

If you scale it up directly from power, 100 N would require 1.2 MW -- where are you gonna generate that?

And to get higher Isp, you're gonna need to pump even more power into it....

The limiting factor here is power generation, and the weight and volume that goes along with it.