Magnetic sails and interplanetary travel

Zubrin, Robert; Andrews, Dana

doi:10.2514/6.1989-2441

Cited by 41 publications

(44 citation statements)

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“…the solar wind dynamic pressure P dyn =ρv 2 which is on the average about 2 nPa at 1 AU distance from the Sun. The idea of using solar wind momentum was first considered by Zubrin and Andrews (1991) who suggested creating an artificial magnetosphere around the spacecraft to deflect the solar wind and thus extract momentum from it. As an alternative way of tapping solar wind momentum the electric sail was suggested by Janhunen (2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation study of solar wind push on a charged wire: basis of solar wind electric sail propulsion

2007

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Abstract.One possibility for propellantless propulsion in space is to use the momentum flux of the solar wind. A way to set up a solar wind sail is to have a set of thin long wires which are kept at high positive potential by an onboard electron gun so that the wires repel and deflect incident solar wind protons. The efficiency of this so-called electric sail depends on how large force a given solar wind exerts on a wire segment and how large electron current the wire segment draws from the solar wind plasma when kept at a given potential. We use 1-D and 2-D electrostatic plasma simulations to calculate the force and present a semitheoretical formula which captures the simulation results. We find that under average solar wind conditions at 1 AU the force per unit length is (5±1)×10 −8 N/m for 15 kV potential and that the electron current is accurately given by the well-known orbital motion limited (OML) theory cylindrical Langmuir probe formula. Although the force may appear small, an analysis shows that because of the very low weight of a thin wire per unit length, quite high final speeds (over 50 km/s) could be achieved by an electric sailing spacecraft using today's flight-proved components. It is possible that artificial electron heating of the plasma in the interaction region could increase the propulsive effect even further.Keywords. General or miscellaneous (Instruments useful in three or more fields; New fields (not classifiable under other headings); Techniques applicable in three or more fields)

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation study of solar wind push on a charged wire: basis of solar wind electric sail propulsion

2007

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“…One of the candidates of next generation interplanetary propulsion system is the sail propulsion system for obtaining the solar energy. A magnetic sail, which was proposed by Zubrin 1) in 1990, consists of a simple hoop coil and can gain a propulsive force generated by the interaction between the solar wind and artificial magnetic field that is induced by the hoop coil. The artificial magnetic field blocks the solar wind, resulting in the formation of a magnetosphere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

3D Hybrid Simulation of Pure Magnetic Sail Including Ion-Neutral Collision Effect in Laboratory

Kajimura

Ueno

Funaki

et al. 2010

AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY JAPAN

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Magnetic Sail is a propellantless propulsion system proposed for an interplanetary space flight. The propulsive force is produced by the interaction between the magnetic field artificially generated by a hoop coil equipped with the magnetic sail and the solar wind. Three-dimensional hybrid particle-in-cell simulations are performed to reproduce the plasma flow structure around the magnetic sail and to measure the propulsive force of the magnetic sail with two different coil currents. We report the characteristics of the magnetosphere, such as the profile of the magnetic field and the predicted thrust values obtained by simulations, which agree well with laboratory experiments, when simulations are carried out by considering the ion-neutral collision effect. The hybrid particle-in-cell simulation carried out without considering the collisional effect gave a thrust value of 2.3 3.5 N, which can be applied to the thrust evaluation of the magnetic sail in a magnetosphere with size of 250 300 km in a collisionless interplanetary space.

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“…Thrust by Eqs. (5) and (6) is plotted in Fig.3 The MagSail by Zubrin (Zubrin & Andrews, 1991) required a spacecraft with a large hoop coil of 64 km in radius to form 100-km-radius blocking area (which corresponds to approximately 30-N-class thrust). However, the dimension of the hoop coil was too large to realize.…”

Section: Wwwintechopencommentioning

confidence: 99%