If I say that I can blow Tiangong-1 away in one breath, many people will definitely say that this is not bragging?
I can only blow away an A4 piece of paper in this breath, but when I get to space, I can safely blow away the spacecraft.
According to Newton's third law, if you want to move an object in motion, you must give it a force.
We walk forward by the friction between the soles of our feet and the ground, and if we are lifted in the air, we have nowhere to exert our strength.
So how does the spacecraft gain force after it is launched into the vast expanse of space?
The originally stationary rocket successfully lifted off with the thrust of the gas, and the same goes for the power of the spacecraft**.
And there are three main ways in which it jets air:
The first is the physical method, which mainly uses compressed gas jets to propulse, and the structure is simple but the efficiency is low.
The second is the chemical method, which is obtained by injecting chemical fuel to burn rapidly expanding gases, which are very powerful but bulky.
The third type is electric propulsion, the most common of which is Hall propulsion, which propels the spacecraft by obtaining a reaction force from a high-speed jet of ions.
So the question is, ions are charged atoms, can the ions of the microscopic world propel the spacecraft of the macroscopic world?
Can this ion current give force?
The disadvantage of Hall propulsion is that the thrust is small, how small?
The Hall thrusters installed on the Tiangong space station output only 80 milliN of thrust each, which is no exaggeration to say that this can only push a piece of paper.
But let's not forget that there is basically no resistance in space, and 80 milliOx is enough to propel a space station of hundreds of tons, although it is a small force.
That is to say, although the thrust is small, it is a flaw, but the flaw is not hidden.
This is because Hall thrusters have three high advantages: high specific impulse, high speed, and high energy efficiency.
The specific impulse represents the thrust generated by a propellant per unit mass like a horse, the less grass it eats, the farther it runs, the higher the specific impulse.
With the same weight of thrusters, Hall thrusters can produce 10 times the thrust of a conventional rocket engine, and the jet speed is related to the final speed of the spacecraft's flight.
While conventional rocket thrusters have a maximum jet speed of three to four kilometers per second, Hall thrusters can reach 10 to 80 kilometers per second.
Traditional rocket thrusters rely on vigorous miracles, but the work is not long-lasting, generally only three or four hundred seconds, which is only enough to take us to escape from the earth.
The Hall thrusters, on the other hand, can work for thousands of hours, allowing the spacecraft to accelerate all the time, making interstellar travel no longer a dream.
In January 2022, China's latest Hall thruster was successfully tested, with a maximum thrust of 46 Newtons, specific impulse and energy efficiency broke the highest record set in the United States.
It has reached the world-class level.
Now you believe it, right?
The power of Hall thrusters not only blows the spacecraft, but also blows the loud clarion call for us to march into the sea of stars.
Looking forward to 2024, welcome to leave a message in the comment area!