Word(s) of the Week: Ion drive.
a space drive that generates thrust by emitting a stream of ions in the direction opposite to that of travel; (especially in modern and scientific use) such a drive generates a relatively weak but steady acceleration that accumulates over time to produce high sub-light velocities.
1947 J. Williamson Equalizer in Astounding SF (Mar.): It had its own ion drive, a regular crew of six, and plenty of additional space for our party.
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2 comments:
Interesting stuff. Read a bit more about them at wikipedia. Goddard theorized about ion drives as early as 1906 and there have actually been working examples of an ion drive made.
I read a bit about ion drive experiments from NASA e-mails I have sent to me. It's an interesting idea and should be useful for very deep space missions.
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