First Exotic Space Thruster Test Ends in Explosion

KentuckyFC writes "A NASA-funded test of an entirely new way to control orbiting satellites has ended with the prototype arcing dangerously and parts of the machine exploding. The new propulsion system is based on the Lorentz force: that a charged particle moving through a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to both its velocity and the field. So the plan is to ensure that a satellite passing though the Earth's magnetic field is electrically charged so as to generate a force that can be used to steer the spacecraft. The advantage of the idea is that it requires no propellant, which is a big deal since most satellites' lifespans are limited by the amount of fuel they can carry. But the first ground-based tests haven't gone entirely to plan."

Good for them

[LGV]

I'm actually glad to see NASA doing stuff that might not work. It seems that a lot of the space work thats been happening in the last decade or two has been stuff that we know we can do. There are still failures, but those tend to be metric vs imperial units issues, not because they're pushing forward in to new areas.

All new technology generates it's share of failures along the way. In the early days NASA blew up a lot of rockets in the process of learning to get them in to space. As long as we're using it on unmanned craft (or on the bench), a decent rate of failures is alright by me if they're learning something from them.

best to discover flaws early

[peter303]

You should watch videos of our first satellite attempts. I'm surprised we didnt have more fried astronauts.

Well I certainly wouldn't

[iminplaya]

let a little thing like an explosion [nasa.gov] deter me.

Re:Jazzing up the story a bit

[ivan256]

When you play back the high-speed camera footage taken through a microscope on a 100" screen...

Oh, nevermind... Even then it's probably not a very impressive explosion.

It bothers me that the editors here simultaneously push the "we don't invest enough in space research" platform, and fall into the "journalistic" trap of sensationalizing NASA's failures to make their readers feel "smarter than those rocket scientist guys".

I have every expectation that the readers and comment writers on Slashdot have vastly differing opinions on the subject, but you'd think that the clearly biased editorial staff here could get their story straight.

Re:Good for them

[jedidiah]

Goddard started out the same way...

Re:Okay, so the big news is...

[geekoid]

Wow, you had to stretch to come to your spurious conclusion about the myth that the government is full of incompetents and money wasters.

Not sure that was the best approach....

[CBob]

(pun intended) I suspect possible solder join problems here. The voltages they're working with are not exactly known for freely arcing unless it's a short. I did notice no mention of the current involved tho. If it was a high current application, it points to someone not insulating correctly. Over-ionized maybe? The excerpt didn't fill too many details in.

Re:Heh

[geekoid]

It's a valid method...just not inside the atmosphere.

They should have expected it.

[Ptraci]

This is how sputtering in a vacuum chamber is done, for manufacturing chips and coating surfaces. The company I work for builds power supplies for these vacuum chambers, and they generally require some arc handling circuitry. Here's [advanced-energy.com] a white paper on arcing.

If you have a negatively charged target in a plasma the target will attract positive ions which will knock bits off of the target if they arrive with sufficient velocity, otherwise they'll stick and neutralize the charge. In a sputtering chamber we want those bits knocked off. If we're sputtering something non-metallic we need to use RF to keep it charged.

Re:Another variant also had problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

"large-scale tethered orbital structures have an additional problem to be solved: Keeping the tethers intact despite kilovolts of induced voltage along the tether and the resulting arcing"

Would those same issues apply to a Space Elevator?

The only failed test...

[Tracy Reed]

...is the one you don't learn anything from.

GO NASA!

Explosions are an indicator of work

[iamlucky13]

The best projects usually have a development report buried somewhere in their history that contains the phrase, "...and then it exploded."

Percy Spencer (microwave oven): "...and then the egg exploded."
James Watt (steam engine): "...and then the boiler exploded."
Alfred Nobel (dynamite): "...and then the nitroglycerin-soaked soil exploded."
Vladmir Titov (Russian cosmonaut): "...and then the Soyuz rocket exploded."
Werner von Braun (NASA engineer): "...and then the Jupiter rocket exploded."
Yang Liwei (Chinese Taikonaut): "...and then the Long March rocket exploded."
Sony test engineer: "...and then the battery exploded."
J. Robert Openheimer: "...and then the Trinity device exploded"...oh wait, that was supposed to happen.

A more personal anecdote:
Someone in the shop at work needed a simple room-temperature dryer for a special project, so he got some large diameter PVC pipe that was handy, filled it with a desiccant, put the material in that needed drying, and screwed the cap on. Then he left it alone for a few hours.

Apparently some sort of gas-producing chemical reaction took place, probably helped by the sun shining through the open door, (...wait for it...) and then the drying chamber exploded, blasting the plastic lid through the ceiling 25 feet overhead and covering the work bay with the tiny pellets of desiccant.

Engineering is fun.

Funny?

[dreamchaser]

Yes there is humor here, but this should be +5 Insightful. Almost EVERY engineering endeavor has involved catastrophic failures at one point or another. If people stopped trying after one such failure we'd be using flint hand axes and making fire with a bow drill still, if even that.

Re:Funny?

[dreamchaser]

Honestly, if I had had mod points I would have been torn between funny and insightful, but funny doesn't add to karma and it was a good post that deserved a reward so I would choose insightful. Don't get me wrong, it also made me chuckle repeatedly. Thanks for that :-)