Jones Beene wrote:
>
> Anyway, the advantage of superchilled water is that you can
> get that high acceleration gradient, about 6 times higher
> than CO2 sublimation, courtesy of Casimir... and just by
> squirting it into a vacuum without any external heat being
> applied. You are not dependent on solar, so you could go
> wherever in the universe desired...
> get that high acceleration gradient, about 6 times higher
> than CO2 sublimation, courtesy of Casimir... and just by
> squirting it into a vacuum without any external heat being
> applied. You are not dependent on solar, so you could go
> wherever in the universe desired...
>
You have a point there Jones (without the Casimir fantasy) sublimation of ice at 1.3 KW/meter^2 would yield
a thrust of about 0.65 lbs (~2.88 nt) off a simple thrust panel; 0.56e-4 kg/sec of water molecules moving at 525 meter/sec.
OTOH. processed waste water fed out to a propulsion panel (you could
almost get to Mars just by flushing the urinal.
One might set up a plasma (corona?) discharge using a screen-wire mash cathode
facing the panel (anode) for boost when you pick up a glacier to tow, out in the Oort Cloud.
Frederick
>
> Jones
>
>
