(October 6, 2019 at 1:24 pm)Succubus Wrote:(October 6, 2019 at 1:07 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: There is no real difference between using water as reaction mass or using some gas like helium as reaction mass. You can build very efficient ion propulsion by vaporizing, dissociating water, and ionizing the oxygen and hydrogen and use them as reaction mass using electric propulsion...
I see no net gain in chucking ionised water (for want of a better term) out the engine nozzle as opposed to chucking out superheated steam.
You can only add so much energy to steam before they stop being steam and become ions anyway. Also, it’s much more efficient to use a magnetic field to chuck stuff out at high energy and speed than to try to do it using heat. To do so the stuff being chucked out needs to be charged.
