Friday, May 17, 2024

ABEP

One specie of perma-ramjet as we might actually get to use in an atmosphere is the Air Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP). It isn't used now because it hasn't been worth it... yet.

The issue here is that where we're trying it out, Earth, there's oxygen. Oxygen corrodes the electrodes. Although I do wonder about Venus or Mars; there's oxygen in both exospheres and in ionic form, but not much of it.

Mars has the advantage that the exosphere is pretty-much ... the sphere. This device could almost work from a human jumping distance.

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