Propellant-Free Space Propulsion Technology Marks Critical Milestone At NASA

Science Daily ^ | 2-5-02 | Editorial Staff

[Young Werther]

Same principal as the "Everlasting Flashlight" advertised on TV. The Faraday effect occurs when coils and stators interact to create current flow. The flashlight stores the energy in an inductive or capacative device and voila light with no batteries.

$19.95 plus shipping and handling and you too can generate EMP. Electro motive propulsion!!!!

[add925]

Kinda makes you wonder if NASA really did go to the moon in 1969.

Definitely a Stupid Propulsion Trick.....but Green Peace NASA probably likes the Environmentally-Friendly approach.

I say launch some nuclear propulsion experiments...Oh, the humanity!

[RightWhale]

This should work just fine for stationkeeping.

[UnChained]

" Same with tethers. They are only "momentum transfer" devices, providing modest increases in velocity which is given to the payload at the tether's expense...ultimately paid by a small dimunition of the Earth's momentum.

Neither technology will work for boosters or deep-space propulsion. In this sense they are just stupid stunts."

What of rotating tethers?

Wouldn't 1000km or so long rotating tethers be useful for making substantial changes in direction and velocity?

Couldn't rotating tethers in various orbits transfer payloads between each other such that a paylod could get from low earth orbit to escape orbit and back to LEO with a net conservation of momentum?

[XBob]

I hope this time they put a 'fisherman' in charge of design, so that they remember to weight the end of the tether to get it to unreel sucessfully, rather than ball and knot up like the previous fiascos.

[anymouse]

NASA is only about 8 years behind the commercial (Tether Applications)/academic (UAH SEDS) sector that used a tether to deploy a small satellite (SEDSAT-1) from a Delta II upper stage in 1998.

http://www.tetherapplications.com/seds1.htm

http://www.seds.org/sedsat

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/sedsat.htm

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/sedsat.htm