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| Friday / 24 March 2006 | ||
Gallium Electromagnetic
Thruster Could Power Moonship.
University of Illinois (UI) researchers
Rod Burton (L) and Rob Thomas (R) won a NASA grant to design, build,
and test a gallium
electromagnetic thruster, which will convert 50,000
watts of electric power into rocket thrust. Gallium is a soft silvery
metal that liquifies at little more
than room temperature and looks something like mercury, but without
its toxicity. Gallium is a trace component in coal and is used to
make transistors, other electronic devices, and high-quality
mirrors. In the future it could be used as rocket fuel. In Burton
and Thomas' system, an electric current generates a magnetic field
that pushes the gallium out a rocket nozzle at high speed, about
25 mi/s (40 km/s). The electric power for the system can come from
either solar cells or a small nuclear reactor. Although Gallium is
expensive at US$1,000 a pound (per 0.454 kg), it provides a high-power
thrust with little fuel consumption and wouldn't be costly in the
context of a billion-dollar space vehicle, according to Burton. The
technology could be used to speed travels between Earth and the Moon
and beyond. The team is supposed to test a small laboratory version
of their thruster by this fall, which they will do in a heavily instrumented
vacuum chamber at UI. If the first test is successful, the researchers
hope to be able to obtain funding to build a larger version. NASA
Marshall SFC, CU Aerospace, and the US Air Force are
participating in the project.
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