Breakable wrote:
I think the first prototypes as well as first generation units will be low frequency to reduce complexity of radiation and thermal management.

… apparently there is a caveat brought up by vansig of capacitor leakage rates.

Such leakage rates tend to climb quickly when the capacitors are running at full charge.

I don’t have any details on the FFX caps and so I don’t know at what frequency this becomes a problem for those particular caps…

… but it’s certainly theoretically possible to run at such a low frequency that the caps leak just a little too much between shots to fire the next pinch.

But is this a problem for these particular caps at 100 hz? 10 hz? 1 hz? Once per fortnight?

I guess the solution to this “throttling” limit would be to use bigger caps so you aren’t running them at full charge.

Are the FFX caps going to be running near max to achieve the desired goals? Could be. If so then in that case running at a lower frequency could be more of a problem than a solution.

But to have an FF unit able to run efficiently at less than a megawatt would be very useful in space applications. To have one that could run at less than 100 kilowatts would enable plug-and-play adaptation to current large spacecraft designs 🙂