Author: Al Williams / Source: Hackaday
Not that we don’t love Star Trek, but the writers could never decide if ion propulsion was super high tech (Spock’s Brain) or something they used every day (The Menagerie). Regardless, ion propulsion is real and we have it today on more than one spacecraft. However, MIT recently demonstrated an ion-powered airplane.
How exciting! An airplane with no moving parts that runs on electricity. Air travel will change forever, right? According to [Real Engineering], ion-propelled (full-sized) aircraft run into problems with the laws of physics. You can see the video explaining that, below.To understand why, you need to know two things: how ion drive works and how the engines differ when using them in an atmosphere. Let’s start with a space-based ion engine, a topic we’ve covered before. Atoms are turned into ions which are accelerated electrically. So the ion engine is just using electricity to create thrust exhaust instead of burning rocket fuel.
The downside is that the thrust is very tiny. The upside is that, in space, that tiny thrust adds up so that in a few days or weeks you can be moving very fast. With no moving parts, keeping an ion engine running constantly is no real problem. Keeping a massive rocket burning fuel for months is problematic.
So the MIT flyer uses the same technology, right? Sort of. Spacecraft carry around their…
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