New Engine Raises Possibility of Cheap Travel To the Moon

shreshtha writes with this intriguing bit from The Daily Mail: "A tiny satellite thruster which can journey to the Moon on just a tenth of a litre of fuel could usher in a new low-cost space age, its creators hope. The mini-motor weights just a few hundred grams and runs on an ionic chemical compound, using electricity to expel ions and generate thrust. The tiny motor isn't built to blast satellites into orbit — instead, it's to help spacecraft manouevre once they're in space, which previously required bulky, expensive engines."

Comments

Re:Someone's reinvented the ion engine

[wisnoskij]

I do not think that the news is that they reinvented it, and seriously everyone on /. knows of the about ion-engines so there is little point in even mentioning it. But that here is a practical use of that engine that works better then anything else we are currently using.

The expensive part

[gmuslera]

is launching to space from earth/moon surface. Traveling once there, and landing (at least in earth) could be relatively inexpensive. But once the space elevator, space fountain or other approaches are built and gives us relatively cheap ways to reach space, this kind of approachs could make a difference.

Re:Sweet!

[tommasorepetti]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1 This is not exactly new... at all. NASA's ion engines have been in service for several years now. Also a tenth liter of fuel is also willfully misleading: the engines expell a liter of propellant but that is not fuel. It is just the expelled material whose momentum generates the forward thrust.