A New Way of Interplanetary Transport

This work is dedicated to That, who made senseful everything

• The first problem is the distance: The length of the Equator is 40 000 km, the distance between the Moon and the Earth is 400 000 km, and the orbit of the Mars is 40 million km away, thus the closest planet is a 1000 times farther than the greatest distance ever covered by man (to the Moon).

• The second problem is the applied propulsion systems: they are basically chemical fuelled rockets, which provide low propellant outflow speed (2-5 km/s), and the usual velocity of space vehicles never reach 20 km/s.

• Thanks to the low speed the interplanetar vehicle has to contain enormous supply. Creating such a spaceship would be a great problem even for the world economy, not only for a single state.

The problems of interplanetar travel

• One of the most remarkable development was the ion thrusters of the recent decades

• They uses electrically (or magnetically) accelerated charged particles instead of gas outlet.

• It eventuates much higher efficacy and higher outflow speed (35 km/s) in an order of magnitude

• Because of this they need mometously smaller amount of propellant

A promising tool: the ion thruster

• The necessity of an outer electric energy source• The relatively small thrust (although it can function continously for a long

time)• The still small outflow speed• The energy loss, which comes from the ionisation• The necessity of an extra ionisation chamber

The problems of ion thrusters

• Catalysis: is there any possibility to reducing the ionisation energy with a catalyzer and on this way increasing the efficacy?

• Most well-known catalyzer: Palladium

The basic idea of the new solution

• The Palladium can act as catalyzer only by using Hydrogen.• Usually Xenon or Krypton are the ion thruster propellant because of their

low ionisation energy/mass ratio and the safe, stabile attributes.• Hydrogen, especially Protium can reach the greatest outflow speed

assuming the same acceleration voltage.• The Hydrogen is problematic because of the relatively high ionisation

energy and because of the molecular bond energy.

• The great advantage: Palladium contains Hydrogen in atomic form.• Palladium and Hydrogen together is a metallic alloy Palladium-hydride,

which has a lot of special attribute, and almost all of these can be used up very well from our point of view.

Strange but much Better

• The Palladium-hydride contains the Hydrogen in atomic form.• It can loose its Hydrogen amount very easily, by simply heating or using

small electric voltage (because of this increasing reaction ability it is used as catalyzer in cars)

• The Hydrogen storing ability of it is extremely good, it can contain 900 times greater volume of Hydrogen than the volume of the metal itself under atmospheric pressure and room temperature.

• On this way the Palladium-hydride in ion thrusters can be at the same time a positive electrode before the (negatively charged) accelerating grid, it also acts as an ionisation chamber, and it can be also the propellant tank itself because of its good Hydrogen storing ability.

• This makes the structure of this new kind of ion thrusters much simplier

Advantages of Palladium-hydride

• The structure is extremely simple, it contains the Palladium-hydride as positive electrode and on the other end the accelerating grid (negatively charged).

• Furthermore it has also the well known electron gun for charge detachment• Because of the small mass of the ions (Hydrogen-ions) the accelerating

length must be longer to be able to reach the higher outflow speed by the same acceleration voltage

• Because of this necessary greater length the ion thruster has a telescopic feature

The structure of this new kind of ion thruster

• Using the same acceleration voltage the outflow speed of Protium can be higher in an order of magnitude (!) than xenon, about 400 km/s.

• A great disadvantage that the ion thruster needs outer energy source. It can be provided by solar energy but the power is very limited in this case.

• The Palladium-hydride has another very interesting feature:it is High-Temperature-Superconductor (HTC)

• The greatest is the Hydrogen amount, the highest is the Meissner point by Palladium-hydride. It can be higher than 200 K. Among deep space circumstances this can be provided very easily.

• The HTC feature can be used up for energy storing, in Superconductors there can be stored a very great amount of energy in the form of huge vortex current, because of they do not have electric resistance.

• On this way, if there is a huge vortex current in the Palladium-hydride in the ion thruster, than it acts as positive electrode, ionisation chamber, propellant tank and also as outer energy supply (!) at the same time.

Further advantages

• When there circuits this huge vortex-current in the Palladium-hydride than it provides much greater accelerating power, than the usual solar panels.

• This allows the radically increasing rate of acceleration and the final outflow speed.

• There is the opportunity in case of hydrogen even reaching relativistic (!) outflow speed.

• That is why the structure is similar than previously, but instead of a grid a well known linear accelerator accelerates the Protium ions.

The structure of this advanced ion thruster

• The usage of supercurrents effects also a huge magnetic field around the ion thruster and also around the whole vehicle.

• In case of manned missions this effects a protection against charged particles (similarly to the magnetic field of the Earth)

• Furthermore this huge magnetic field allows the vehicle to act even as a magnetic solar sailboat.

• This magnetic field can finally acts as a particle trap and collects the ions to its magnetic poles (typically Protium ions).

• Summarizing the advantages, especially the extremely increased outflow speed, and the basic equation of rocket propulsion: v(t)=voutflowln(m0/m(t)), it can be declared that in many orders of magnitude increased propellant outflow speed effects in many orders of magnitude higher cruising speed (!), which gives the real opportunity to conquer the Solar System.

Collateral advantages

Thank you for your attention!