Vacuum Electrostatic Principles
Vacuum Electrostatic Principles — Terra Invicta technology. We explore methods of using electrically-charged particles to create thrust, power weapons, an…
About Vacuum Electrostatic Principles
Vacuum Electrostatic Principles is a Terra Invicta technology in Energy with a research cost of 1,000.
We explore methods of using electrically-charged particles to create thrust, power weapons, and contain the once-uncontainable.
Electrostatic propulsion, in which an electrical field is applied to the ions within a propellant in the desired direction of acceleration, is nothing new - already, we have probes, which ionize xenon gas in order to create limited thrust. This is possible only in the vacuum of space, for such propulsion methods could overcome neither air resistance nor gravitational pull. However, even though the propellant is ejected some twenty times faster than from a classical chemical thruster, the sheer electrical power required to sustain it currently makes it infeasible for larger craft, let alone to achieve take-off or landing. As new technologies enable greater levels of on-board electrical power, electric propulsion can become more of a reality, however. The likes of Gridded Ion Drives, Hall Effect Thrusters, and High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thrusters offer great potential for longer, further-reaching missions. Thanks to successful experiments with an array of rare gases and liquid metals as propellants, our researchers have been able to create moderate electrostatic thrust that is sustained for far longer than any known chemical method, and uses far less propellant. By building upon these principles, they believe we can not only create faster craft, but potentially also devastating energy weapons and even devise methods of containing unstable, deadly plasma.