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> "Genergo’s system generates thrust without using any propellant and without expelling reaction mass, by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses." Anyone have a clue how this might work?
(I don't think you can do this but I'm not a physicist...)
However, there's a key difference between attitude control and movement. Changing your orientation doesn't involve changes in net kinetic energy, momentum, etc.. Changing speed (i.e. What a propulsion system does) does involve changes in these quantities, so Newtonian conservation laws come into play.
>"Genergo’s system generates thrust without using any propellant and without expelling reaction mass, by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses."
If this isn't hogwash, it might be something similar to an ion engine. i.e. It does operate by expelling propellant, but what it uses as propellant is background dust and ions, accelerated to a high velocity by electric fields and expelled.
If, as the site claims, this technology is currently working and produces non-negligible thrust, it could be very useful. They need to be very clear about what this is though, since vague and unscientific sounding claims will not attract clients.
They say it works "by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses", so I assume it's reacting against the Earth's magnetic field using the Lorentz force?
They say it works "by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses", so I assume it's reacting against the Earth's magnetic field using the Lorentz force?
That would be "using Earth's magnetic field to create propulsion" and obviously would not work in deep space.
Satellites once used propellant for attitude control. When the propellant was used up, the satellite lost the ability to maintain or change orientation. Very much as this article describes, control moment gyroscopes took over because they didn't require propellant. They operate on the same principles that let a cat land on it's feet by twisting about as it falls. However, there's a key difference between attitude con…
> "Genergo’s system generates thrust without using any propellant and without expelling reaction mass, by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses." Anyone have a clue how this might work?
Generating matter somehow via E/c^2=m? (I don't think you can do this but I'm not a physicist...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
If you have a source of energy on the spacecraft, like a solar panel, you could theoretically convert some of that energy to particle pairs with mass. But this is such an inefficient process (and so inherently low-mass with any practical energy source) that I doubt the claimed thruster could work this way.
Reactionless drives are probably impossible and inventing them would be an earthshattering breakthrough.
Drives "powered" by photon reactions are possible but to get a meaningful amount of thrust you have to produce just an absurd amount of light. (using one in orbit would be a weapon of mass destruction, brighter than the sun, etc)
Otherwise, I don't know, maybe this is something mundane with a little bit of thrust interacting with sparse upper atmosphere gas or something.
> "Genergo’s system generates thrust without using any propellant and without expelling reaction mass, by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses." Anyone have a clue how this might work?
They say it works "by directly converting electrical energy into thrust through controlled electromagnetic impulses", so I assume it's reacting against the Earth's magnetic field using the Lorentz force?