• Question: hey charlie (:-) do you help to launch space rockets? and would you like your mini space rocket to launch in space one day with you inside?

    Asked by totallygnarly to Charlie on 20 Mar 2011. This question was also asked by danrgw.
    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      hi totallygnarly sorry for taking a while to answer this question – it seemed to get lost in my inbox!!

      No my job isn’t exactly to help launch space rockets – although that would be cool!!
      I am doing the testing of a new type of spacecraft thruster, making sure it is reliable and ready for launch. The thruster is a type of ion thruster called a colloid electrospray thruster. It works by creating ions directly from a liquid being injected out of a very small needle (its diameter is ten millionths of a metre!!), and these ions are accelerated and thrown out of the thruster to produce the thrust though. The thrust though is tiny – about one milion millionth of the space shuttle main engine! That’s about the same as the weight of one millionth of an apple on your hand! But the speeds the ions are accelerated to can be very high and this makes the thruster very efficient. This means it doesnt have to carry much fuel, and can fit onto tiny spacecraft.
      These mini-spacecraft are called cubsats, and about the size of a shoebox or a nintendo game cube! They only have limited uses at the moment (partly because no propulsion system will fit onto them), but with our thrusters attached to them they should be able to do much more wide ranging roles, and maybe even go to the moon!
      Sadly because of the small forces (thrusts) these ion engines produce, they would never be capable of pushing human-carrying spacecraft along. But would i like to go into space one day?? I’d love to!! Would you???

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