2012/11/01 by Leonid Pekker, Michael Keidar · 1 citation
Engineering · #Electrohydrodynamics and Fluid Dynamics #Particle accelerators and beam dynamics #Plasma Diagnostics and Applications
paper · doi:10.2514/1.b34441
openalex publication_date 2012/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
The principle idea of using airbreathing electrical propulsion for a vehicle flying at orbital speed on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere is examined. In this paper, a simple model of a Hall-effect thruster in which the propellant is an ambient air is presented. A new mode of the airbreathing thruster operation is presented in which incoming air is fully ionizedwithout preliminary compression. The required lengths of the thruster chamber, themagneticfields, the thrust, and other parameters of an ideal airbreathing Hall-effect thruster are calculated as a function of the flying altitude of the vehicle. For instance, in the case of the 95-kmorbit, the lengths of thruster chamber of 47.8 cm, theHall thruster gap of 2.3 cm, and the applied voltage of 3 kV, themodel gives the thrust of about 9.1 N and the power range of about 700–800 kW depending of the strength of a magnetic field. The thruster might be powered using electromagnetic beams generated at ground power stations or crafts flying at higher orbital altitudes where the drag force is negligible. The estimates presented show that the beam receiver size will not exceed the size of the vehicle and should not generate a drag force larger than the calculated thrust.