Question: How will your minture rockets and spaceships benifit us? will they allow us to explore the universe easier or do they have other benifits?

Charlie Ryan answered on 23 Mar 2011:

hi silverfox again! thanks for your interest in my research, and your great question!
Well as you know the rockets i design and test are so small that thy can really only be used on small spacecraft – they can’t produce the force needed to move a big spacecraft without having to wait for a very long time!
currently these small spacecraft – i think i’ve said already that they are called cubesats – are very limited in what they do. This is simply because of size – its hard to squeeze stuff onto them as they are so small. Currently no cubesats have flown that have had an engine on them. this means that they can’t point in certain directions, and can’t go out of the low earth orbit they were launched into.
So hopefully with the mini-rockets we are designing this situation will change, and the cubesats can be used to monitor the earth in greater detail, for signs of climate change, for imaging natural disasters, or for answerring physiscs problems. Also the propulsion system should allow these very small spacecraft to head off to the moon, to nearby asteroids, and maybe even to mars!!