Related papers: What fuel for a rocket?
Two technological problems must be solved before daring to interstellar flight: fuel and propulsion. The highest energy-density fuel is antimatter in its solid or liquid state and this fuel is likely to be our primary choice for multi-ton…
The origin of fuel cell technology has a notable connection to the history of spaceflight, having been used in remarkable programs such as Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. With the constant growth of the electric propulsion technology…
Radiation hazard on board of a relativistic rocket can be of internal and external origin. Because of its highest specific energy density, antimatter is considered to be the preferred rocket fuel for accelerating a multi-ton rocket up to…
The motion of rockets is part of the study devoted to the motion of variable mass systems. Notably those in which the mass leaves permanently the considered system. Rockets are propelled forward by the reaction force produced by the hot…
Gauging the benefits of hypothetical gravity control propulsion is difficult, but addressable. The major challenge is that such breakthroughs are still only notional concepts rather than being specific methods from which performance can be…
Solid propellants are energetic materials used to launch and propel rockets and missiles. Although their history dates to the use of black powder more than two millennia ago, greater performance demands and the need for "insensitive…
We study the thermodynamics of the water rocket in the thrust phase, taking into account the expansion of the air with water vapor, vapor condensation and the energy taken from the environment. We set up a simple experimental device with a…
At high redshift, extragalactic jets are associated with extended emission line regions. We present global and local hydrodynamic simulations of the interaction of jets with their environment relevant to this phenomenon. We determine the…
A new kind of Nuclear rocket engine with very High specific impulse is presented
The power of blazar jets rivals the power that gravity can extract from accreting matter. The mechanism launching and accelerating jets can be considered as the most efficient engine operating in radio--loud sources. It is still a matter of…
In this short note, we investigate the feedback control of relativistic dynamics propelled by mass ejection, modeling, e.g., the relativistic rocket control or the relativistic (space-travel) flight control. As an extreme case, we also…
A scientific analysis of the conditions under which gravity could be controlled and the implications that an hypothetical manipulation of gravity would have for known schemes of space propulsion have been the scope of a recent study carried…
Jets, collimated outflows of particles and fields, are observed in a wide variety of astrophysical systems, including Active Galactic Nuclei of various types, microquasars, gamma-ray bursts, and young stellar objects. Despite intensive…
We examine the use of the interplanetary substance as a possible fuel for spacecraft plasma thrusters for interplanetary flights. The solar radiation is considered as an energy source for the ionization and the acceleration of particles of…
We use moment formalism of relativistic radiation hydrodynamics to obtain equations of motion of radial jets and solve them using polytropic equation of state of the relativistic gas. We consider curved space-time around black holes and…
Burnback analysis is a geometric exercise, whose correct solution leads to obtaining the thrust curve of solid propellant rockets. Traditionally, Piobert statement, which introduces a certain amount of intuition, is used as an argument to…
In the context of special relativity, we discuss the specific impulse of a rocket whose exhaust jet consists of massive and/or massless particles. This work generalizes previous results and corrects some errors of a recently published paper…
Energy harvesting is the fundamental activity in almost all forms of space exploration known to humans. So far, in most cases, it is not feasible to bring, along with probe, spacecraft or rover suitable supply of fuel to cover all mission's…
Consuming long-range interplanetary medium with fuel for driving plasma thrust is vital. Methods of capturing the space environment depending on its density and the ship velocity are indispensable issues to extract the space environment as…
Current rocket technology can not send the spaceship very far, because the amount of the chemical fuel it can take is limited. We try to use dark matter (DM) as fuel to solve this problem. In this work, we give an example of DM engine using…