vansig wrote:
Not sure how to calculate the amount of argon needed to cool the magnets, but this will feed into the equation for optimal Isp.
It seems 80 kW waste heat per engine would boil .5 kg/s Argon at ~85 kelvin; but that’s much more than we want (by a factor >100), so most of that heat will have to be rejected another way. Keeping 80 kW at below Tc~93K implies a hectare-size radiator.
Yikes! Please tell me those magnets wont produce that heat.
