Reply To: Great News!

[ikanreed]

zapkitty wrote:

Well, I suppose that’s pretty reasonable. But, for example FoFu-1 is very sensitive to disruption. Imagine if you had tin whiskers on the electrodes, even very tiny ones.

Tin? Where would the tin come from? The electronics would have to be outside the vacuum chamber.

And even an FF space drive will have a vacuum chamber… as the fuel pressure has to rise to several torr before you can start it.

That it is space-based would just mean that you save on the cost and maintenance of a vacuum pump.

A plasma window should be able to allow the beam to exit the chamber into an exhaust assembly of some kind while maintaining chamber pressure.

Tin whiskers come from the sodder used to finish circuitry. In the absence of gravity and friction, that sodder, bearing slightly electrical charge(caused in part by the very circuits they are part of), will, atom by atom, move into long whisker shape leading to short circuits and variation in electric/magnetic fields. I’m not saying that WOULD happen in a space based FoFu, just that when alignment is so critical, it’s the kind of failing you wouldn’t want to have happen.