Magnetic Field Thruster Developed

ndverdo writes "There are reports of a working magnetic field engine prototype based on Alfvén waves designed by Austrian scientists. According to the reports fuel savings in rocket engines of 90% could be achieved. Other benefits include enhanced durability due to the nozzle forming outside the engine."

Comments

Come On Editors

[nmb3000]

I know it's Sunday, but lets think a little. Why the heck link directly to a Babelfish translation making the poor fishy run the page through the translator for every Slashdot visitor?

USE CORAL CACHE and create a Fish-friendly copy!

It's not ignorance anymore editors, it's pure arrogance. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Yeah, so you direct the tsunami that is Slashdot. Ooh, aah, wow. Altavista doesn't even get any ad-generated revenue. This is what will make people block specific referrers. I know if I was the webmaster for Altavista, Babel would not allow references from slashdot.org anymore.

Re:Come On Editors

[evilviper]

It's not ignorance anymore editors, it's pure arrogance. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

I hear people screaming at the editors over and over, telling them they should link to Coral/Mirrordot/Wayback/etc. As nice as it sounds in theory, every time somebody posts a comment with a link to any of those web caches, they go down much more quickly than the linked website itself.

One benefit of linking to websites directly is that they're each only serving up the contents for one story. If the editors used any of those caches, they'd be responsible for serving up the traffic for ALL slashdot stories. They'd close-up shop permanently after maybe 2 days of that.

If you've got some actual, viable alternative, let us all know about it.

Re:Yeah but the article is inacurate.

[Trizor]

Weight. Even the components of a big reactor are heavy. A Tokamak style fusion reactor that exhausted into the engine feed would be the best system, and probably have the thrust to take us to the stars (1 G acceleration for 1 year to get damn close to lightspeed).

Re:Applicable to launch vehicles?

[J05H]

From what the better translations on /. seem to say, this system could find an application as a different nozzle for a NERVA or VASIMIR nuclear fission drive. The NERVA is probably impossible politically, but this kind of nozzle would enable true space-Ships - vehicles capable of lifting hundreds of tons into orbit. Some of the NERVA engines (Timberwind) proposed were capable of LEO launch, this kind of magnetic "afterburner" (an excellent analogy) would greatly add to the efficiency of that rocket. In space it would add to or replace the accelerators in a VASMIR nuke. From the description it could be used in a theoretical Zubrinite saltwater steam rocket or a solar-thermal rocket, the Alven wave properties work on any conductive fluid. This can be either a mid-low thrust magnetic drive (compare to a Hall thruster) or a boost added to a nuclear rocket. I'm not sure if it would be good as a station-keeping thruster as suggested above, but it'd open the inner solar system up to us - it could easily allow non-conjunction flights to mars and other bodies. Regular VASIMIR would too, but this is a very cool addition - it might be something the VASIMR already does. It'd make a great third-stage engine or space-tug engine.

At first I thought this was another article about M2P2, this is much different and very interesting. It'd be funny to combine the two.

Josh