Earth to orbit and hypersonic point to point, rocket propulsion optimization has orders of magnitude potential

Vidduley: Electrodeless Ring Discharge History (since 1884!) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6VvNJN8XM

Wade Cooper,

Don’t just focus on the electromagnetic fields, but spend as much time on acoustics. The ions carry a lot of the mass and energy. USE SI units (Pascal and Kelvin) most of the literature will use those units and you will waste a lot of time converting. I suggest you work on both SpaceX Starship sized problems, and vacuum applications. The Saturn V is actually fairly well documented. Yes, the SpaceX engine ran at 350 bar (35 MegaPascal). For the earth to orbit portion, or for point-to-point hypersonic passenger and freight traffic, you need to deal with the detailed composition and excitation of the atmosphere and all the ions and excitations. It is not impossible, just tedious.

Look at resonant ground effects, You can gain from acoustic resonance which is pretty well known. Acoustic levitation is actually slightly ahead of magnetic levitation. This particular “electrodeless discharge” is most likely better studied under “RF plasma” or “radio frequency plasma” or even “cyclotron resonance” of “microwave plasma”.

You can use magnetic pressure gradient forces for some things. At millimeter and micrometer sizes near nanowires with strong magnetic fields, the forces are strong to control the flows. It requires precision engineering and lots of calculations. So invest in tools for calculation, calibration and simulation. It is much cheaper to model than to build. I think you are much too conservative with 1000 bar (0.1 GigaPascal). The limits are in the 100’s of GigaPascals or higher. Check the strength of solids you will use for electrodes and bounding surfaces. The tensile strength is given in MegaPascal usually (MPa).

You can use electric fields from electrons and ions, or from clusters. You can use magnetic fields from nanoparticles, atoms and electrons. Those field energy densities are much higher.

Finally, the limit on the fields at the earth’s surface are determined by the gravitational energy density which is comparable (9.8 m/s^2) to a magnetic field of about 380 Tesla. The natural lightning discharge is limited by the gravitational energy density. On the earth and sun the peak discharges match the gravitational energy density (it puts a limit) and then is is close to Planck black body spectrum, but resonant methods can excite most any mode you can monitor and control.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

Vidduley: Electrodeless Ring Discharge History (since 1884!) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu6VvNJN8XM

An important concept is “volts per mean free path”. It sets the limits on ionization and activation phenomena. If you have 140 KiloVolts over 30 cm, that is 0.46667 Volts/microMeter. The mean free path in air (look at Wikipedia mean free path tables) is about 65 nanometer

(140 KiloVolts/ 30 cm) * 65 nanoMeters in Volts = 0.030333 Volts for one mean free path.

Google will do the calculation for you. Just write it out completely “(140 KiloVolts/ 30 cm) * 65 nanoMeters in Volts ”

The “ionization energy for nitrogen in electron volts” is 14.4 electronVolts (eV)

The dissociation energy for N2 in electron volts is about 9.756

NIST “strong lines of Nitrogen” gives the wavelengths in Angstrom, The first entry is 644.635 Angstrom), Use this form with Google and it will do the conversion for you. It wants “Planck’s Constant” exactly that way. It is not a great calculator yet, but it has gotten better. Check the results, don’t trust it yet.

(Planck’s Constant * speed of light)/(644.635 angstrom) in electron volts — gives 19.2332403 electron volts

In symbolic form I used E_eV = (PlancksConstant*SpeedOfLight)/(Wavelength_meters*electron_charge). Using Google it can handle some conversions for you. Search for “CODATA Planck’s constant” to get the most recent values. I use NIST, even if it means manually editing the values every time.

There needs to be a standard location for all constants and equations and methods on the Internet. Not millions of “speed of light” just one.

The standard for the Internet is SI units. The browsers are required to give the browser user whatever units they prefer, in each context.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

I think you all will benefit from looking at some well developed technologies, where there is room for improvements and new applications: And lots of useful information and methods online.

(“sputter” OR “sputtering”) (“magnetron” OR “plasmatron”) has about 3.8 Million entry points

“sputter deposition” on Wikipedia

“sputter-deposited” OR “sputter deposition” has about 813,000 entry points

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

Vidduley: Flare Corona Discharge at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Fry6ktu4w

Vidduley,

Put a sharp point at the bottom. Use a circuit to monitor the current and set a maximum. Trying to use hands and eyes to control a process that moves at nearly the speed of light is a losing battle. Measure the FFT of the current, and solve for the modulation to have the path what you want. Are you aiming for a smooth cylindrical channel with a particular beam power density or current density? What is the voltage? What is the current? Basic measurements will speed your development process. Guessing and doing things by eye and hand is basically impossible, which is why you are spending years getting to this point. I like what you are doing, but you can be more efficient.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation