Ion drives

[flytandem]

good point

might be a problem, do you have any programming experience flytandem?

presently burnt out on it.:sorry: Never got very far into it too. First computer was a 286 with a book on qbasic so I played around for a few hundred hours making motion based games.
http://www.flytandem.com/games/freeware.htm
I was googling to see if anyone else had made a gravity sim like what I had created, when I found Orbiter.:speakcool:

 

[Bj]

presently burnt out on it.:sorry: Never got very far into it too. First computer was a 286 with a book on qbasic so I played around for a few hundred hours making motion based games.
http://www.flytandem.com/games/freeware.htm
I was googling to see if anyone else had made a gravity sim like what I had created, when I found Orbiter.:speakcool:

looks cool, you should have stayed with it :sorry:


I am presently a C++ wannabe, but *obviously* it takes a while to learn, and retain what you learned

 

[Lunar Pilot]

Too late

I think you're too late about Star Trek addons, I've already found about a dozen. (Still not sure if they work, I'm terrible at installing addons, they never work)

 

[ijuin]

Why use nuclear fuel to make the gases > find a way to harvest the gases from space!

The late Dr. Bussard tried that idea, but it turns out that the drag forces created by gathering and compressing the fuel would exceed the thrust from the engine, so the ramjet model doesn't work out.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

They use Xenon, but they also plan to use a variety of other fuels they think will increase thrust without sacrificing ISP or increase ISP without sacrificing thrust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_engines#Comparisons
Looks like Bismuth is one they're looking at as well as Hydrogen and Lithium vapor. Liquid Cesium just seems too underpowered to me from that table.

 

[n0mad23]

Pulsed Plasma Thrusters (PPTs) are related to Ion Drives, but different enough that you might want to check into this technology as well.