Talk:Spacecraft electric propulsion

message: I'm really surprised there is no electric propulsion page... The ion thruster link seems to be the closest, however it is not entirely accurate... (e.g, resistojets don't utilize ions). Someone needs to write this. Allen314159 05:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 2006

message: This article as of 29 August 2007 only discusses its use in spacecraft.  This mode of propulsion is also found in many other forms such as automobiles, locomotives, and ships.  Those usages of electric propulsion should be mentioned here.  After all, spacecraft do not have a monopoly on this technology, nor has electric propulsion been used successfully in space yet, but has been used terestrially for decades. - Deeplogic 20:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the name "electric propulsion" sounds like it might include electric automobiles, ships, etc. Currently, those things are all discussed in the electric vehicle article. Is there a better way to help our readers who may stumble across one when they are really looking for the other one? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 05:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

text: I also agree. If it were me, I'd rename this page "electric spacecraft propulsion" and make "electric propulsion" a disambiguation page. Anyone object? --IanOsgood (talk) 20:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

text: I'm really, really, not sure. There's also electric motor to consider; should they include ion drives? Ion drives do produce mechanical motion... I suspect yes. Perhaps electric propulsion is the main article, and electric motor is the subarticle??- Wolfkeeper 21:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

text: It's very dangerous to make articles not called what they contain; electric vehicle is about vehicles, whereas electric propulsion is about propulsion techniques. I think that also extends to this article; an article called 'electric propulsion' should cover all electric propulsion until the article gets too big, then it should be split. Right now, the article is tiny.- Wolfkeeper 21:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Other vehicles

message: It now seems odd that Electric Propulsion diverts to a page on electrically propelled space vehicles with only a feed back to Electric Vehicles. And even that page mainly considers road vehicles, apart from the section on vehicle types. Would it not be more sensible to make the Electric Propulsion page into a disambiguation page with entries including these two and Railway Electrification System, Submarines#Propulsion etc.? If no one objects, I'll do it in a day or two. Chris55 (talk) 13:52, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look, you will see that the disambiguation page is there. However I can't agree that "electric propulsion" refers just to the aerospace industry. I'm not surprised that it doesn't have any qualifier when used within that industry - it won't need it. But you will see from the disambiguation page that it's a common concept in many other fields and one needs to consider the average reader - who is probably more interested in cars than space vehicles. If you really want this article to be called Electric propulsion then the usual wiki approach would be to put (spacecraft) after it as a disambiguator. However, create an id for yourself and look at Wikipedia:Disambiguation before doing it. Chris55 (talk) 07:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

text: Yes, "Electric propulsion (spacecraft)" would be fine. I'll have to look and figure out how to do it.. 137.78.133.222 (talk) 00:08, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Disambiguation page

message: There seems to be an inconsistent non-sequitur in the lede.  The first sentence talks about electric motors for providing mechanical energy for spacecraft.  The second sentence speaks about spacecraft propulsion, which is more in line with the article subject.  But this nonsensical nonsequitur has been present in the article for nearly a year, and I don't know much about electric propulsion, so am a bit reticent to just delete the electric motor stuff.  Does it make sense to anyone else?  N2e (talk) 06:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, *I* agree with you, but watch what happens when you take out "electric motors" - suddenly a horde of sword-wielding skeletons will restore it to the article. Nobody but Wikipedia editors call the things that push spacecraft along "electric motors". --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The Wikipedia isn't about what things are called. If encyclopedias were about what things were called, then the article 'desert' would be about abandoning things as well as arid regions of the world.Rememberway (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

text: An electric motor is something that creates motion from electrical power. Examples include rotary motors, linear motors and electrically power thrusters. All convert electrical energy into kinetic energy. An example in the lead is the electrodynamic tether which is a very clear example of an electric motor used for spacecraft propulsion, but every other propulsion system as well can be classified as electric motors, from the definition.Rememberway (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for illustrating the point. This is why cat is a redirect to felis catus. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The felis catus article is certainly at cat, but it's not about cats in general which is at felidae. The cat article is only about housecats, and any of the names 'felis catus' 'housecat' 'domestic cat' 'cat' would doubtless have been pretty acceptable name for the article, and the body of the article text wouldn't have changed more than superficially. That's another good example of how encyclopedia articles aren't about their names, they're about what they state they're about in the lead.Rememberway (talk) 19:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Basically, in encyclopedias, simply renaming articles (including fixing up the links) you shouldn't change anything very significant; if it does, it's usually not a correctly written article.Rememberway (talk) 19:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Let's get back to discussing the improvement of this article.  I take the point that Rememberway makes that some types of spacecraft propulsion (e.g., rotating, conductive tethers) have certain characteristics of an electric motor.  1) I don't get at all how "electrically powered spacecraft propulsion system is any of a number of forms of electric motors which spacecraft can employ to gain mechanical energy in outer space." as the article lede currently asserts.  Moreover, 2) even if there is some esoteric means by which a chemical-reaction rocket engine could be considered an "electric motor", that would be esoteric geek-talk and we ought to strive to write a lede that, while correct, is at least meaningful and grokable to the typical Wikipedia reader.  In which case, calling all spacecraft propulsion electric motors should not be what we lead with, and maybe it would fit further down on in the esoteric geeky detail section of the article.  So can anyone help me understand my question in no. 1)?  and then others please weigh in on no. 2). Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Be bold and good luck. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-sequitur in lede

message: It would be useful if the formulas for electric propulsion were listed.  They are:
Isp and thrust are related to power in this way:
: thrust/(g*Isp)= massflow
: power= .5*massflow*(g*Isp)^2
: power = .5*thrust*(g*Isp)
Andrew Swallow (talk) 22:35, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formulas Useful 

message: * The summary says:  [ “replace grotesque ugly low content lead with one that has some content and says the same things”] – it’s a lie, the lead was not low-content, and replacement (actually, an act of edit warring) did not always improve it:
** internal link electric power removed without compensation
** internal link magnetosphere removed without compensation
** “thrust is weaker” does not offer any explanation, but non-specific link “orders of magnitude” was injected
* “becuase” [#Dynamic_properties]
* “the spacecraft mostly follows an inertial trajectory” (were: “most of its flight time the spacecraft almost follows an inertial trajectory”, which is longer, but correct)
* the same edit removed crucially important references to “gravity well” and “orbiting”
Does somebody (except Wtshymanski himself) object against fixing all these degradations? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content degradations and misleading edit summary of Wtshymanski 

message: * intro says "Electric thrusters typically offer much higher thrust duration per unit weight of propellant than chemical rockets".  This is not technically correct.  They offer much higher specific impulse, which is much higher total impulse per unit weight of propellant.  Total impulse is equal to the magnitude of the thrust multiplied by the thrust duration.  Thrust duration in and of itself is not meaningful unless you specify the thrust magnitude.
Bottom line: the phrase "higher thrust duration per unit weight" is not correct.  I recommend it be changed back to simply "specific impulse", which is technically correct. Any objections? Marstimrdad  —Preceding undated comment added 04:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical Error: bad definition of specific impulse in intro 

message: - Geoffrey A. Landis: Laser-powered Interstellar Probe Vyacheslav84 (talk) 05:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geoffrey Landis 

message: There is a proposal to make in the History section Electrically powered spacecraft propulsion such a proposal "Electrically powered spacecraft propulsion with a nuclear reactor considered\discussed for interstellar Project Daedalus and was rejected because of small acceleration and big time travel. Title: Project Daedalus. Authors: Bond, A.; Martin, A. R. Publication: Journal of the British Interplanetary Society Supplement, p. S5-S7 Publication Date: 00/1978 Origin: ARI ARI Keywords: Miscellanea, Philosophical Aspects, Extraterrestrial Life Comment: A & AA ID. AAA021.015.025 Bibliographic Code: 1978JBIS ... 31S ... 5B " Do you agree? Vyacheslav84 (talk) 06:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  question 

message: The claim that electric propulsion "...works best for deep space missions." is demonstrably incorrect since reference 5 lists over 200 spacecraft that use electric propulsion in Earth orbit.  That statement should be removed from the introduction, since it contradicts the sentence just 2 lines below low. (see W. Andrew Hoskins et al. "30 Years of Electric Propulsion Flight Experience at Aerojet Rocketdyne", Paper IEPC-2013-439, 33rd International Electric Propulsion Conference, Washington DC, October 2013. http://www.iepc2013.org/get?id=439
18:37, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Electric Propulsion use more often at Earth than in deep space 

message: - But trips to the outer planets of the solar system would generally require nuclear power sources. A large, heavy craft would need a nuclear reactor, but a smaller, lighter one might get by with a thermoelectric power-generation device heated by the decay of radioisotopes...So far the most advanced designs could impart a delta-v of 100 km/s much too slow to take a spacecraft to the far-off stars but plenty enough to visit the outer planets in a reasonable amount of time. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 02:32, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  User Marstimrdad and his change in article

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
*Oppose provisionally as per WP:AT.  Primarily a rocket is used to help a vehicle escape from a planet (or to move a package of fireworks into an elevated position). The propulsion presented seems to relate to space flight.  GregKaye 17:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: Something is wrong here. The article states:
:Performance of electrothermal systems in terms of specific impulse (Isp) is somewhat modest (500 to ~1000 seconds), but exceeds that of cold gas thrusters, monopropellant rockets, and even most bipropellant rockets.
Yet the article Liquid rocket propellant states (about bipropellants):
:The highest specific impulse chemistry ever test-fired in a rocket engine was lithium and fluorine, with hydrogen added to improve the exhaust thermodynamics [...]. The combination delivered 542 s specific impulse in a vacuum [...].
This does not add up. Either the specific impulse values of the electrothermal systems is misstated, or it is anything but "modest in terms of specific impulse" (being on par with the most effective bipropellant to being almost twice as effective). -- 145.228.61.5 (talk) 08:14, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific Impulse 

message: I have recently come across references that indicate the the Soviet Zond spacecraft all used experimental ion thrusters for attitude control, including this reference from NASA on Zond 1. This reference gives further details, including “Its new ion thrusters were also tested but were found to operate erratically, possibly due to the loss of pressure in the orbital compartment where the thrusters’ control systems were located.” As the Zond 1 mission predates the SERT-1 test I believe the wording “The first demonstration of electric propulsion was an ion engine carried on board the NASA SERT-1” needs to be modified.  Was thinking of stating that the first test was Zond 1 and the first successful demonstration was SERT-1.  This logic could also be used in other articles that state that SERT-1 was the first demonstation in space.  Thoughts? Ilenart626 (talk) 18:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds reasonable to me, though I would note that the drewexmachina.com source probably would not pass muster, as it's a 'blog' of sorts - regardless of the author's obvious subject-matter expertise. But the rest of it sound perfectly reasonable. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 04:15, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the first time I have come across Drewexmachina and for a amateur website it appears to have some decent information.  Note that for Zond 1 the site includes a list of references.  However I take your point and in addition to the NASA reference a quick review identified quite a few other references ie 1 2.  Drewexmachina‘s references also included  Boris Chertok, Rockets and People Volume III so any changes I make will include other references.  Thanks for your comments. Ilenart626 (talk) 10:40, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ion thrusters used by Soviet Zond robotic spacecraft