Futurology

1807 readers

19 users here now

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

A new space start-up wants to try out a long talked about space tech - solar thermal propulsion (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Lugh 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Solar thermal propulsion is the idea of using solar energy to heat a propellant and using that energy for thrust. If it worked as hoped it could be very useful in LEO and beyond. Portal Space Systems, the start-up here, points out there are already plenty of use cases for it now moving satellites into different orbits. This idea has been around since the 1950s, and could even be described as low-tech (it could work with mirrors heating water), but the logistics and infrastructure to support it might not be so simple, or economically viable.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Is that like a solar sail?

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 2 points 6 months ago

In that it uses sunlight and large mirrors, but it should deliver more thrust, but also require some propellant. Also should be able to fire in any direction, depending on how the mirrors are able to pivot to focus on the propellant chamber.