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| TILE thruster chip. |
A company called Accion Systems has invented an ion thruster using an electronic chip that sucks ions out of an ionic liquid salt solution and emits them through nozzles to create thrust on the order of 0.4 Newtons per meter squared. However, as the technology progresses and the nozzles get closer together, it will approach the theoretical limit of 10,000 Newtons per square meter or about 208 pounds-force per square foot. It is called TILE - Tiled Ionic Liquid Electrospray. Some circuitry and ionic solution in a case. That’s it. No pumps, pipes, valves, ionization chamber, or external cathode. It’s a black box thruster.
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| TILE 50 |
The company currently has four sizes ranging from cigarette pack to small clothes dryer in size with an axial thrust of 0.05 to 10+ mN. This new type of thruster has implications for existing and future satellites. It can extend missions, raise orbits, rotate, and de-orbit satellites. With appropriate catch nets or other attachment devices, it could latch on to orbital debris and bring it flaming to destruction into the atmosphere. Worth 350 billion dollars now, the satellite industry is expected to be worth over one trillion dollars by 2040.
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| Space debris that TILE could help eliminate. |
This space drive will be a big boost to the budding asteroid mining industry. It could turn out to be the perfect drive for sending out probes, or even autonomous AI drones, to prospect and mine asteroids. At the least, it would be an adjunct to the planned hydrogen/oxygen rockets fueled by water located on the Moon and asteroids.
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| TILE 500 |
It could even be the basis for a mission to save Earth. If asteroid tracking pays off, and we locate a killer asteroid in time to change its orbit, these ion thrusters might be just the efficient, long lasting drive mechanism to do the job. A drone would intercept the asteroid, anchor itself to the surface, fold out an array of ion thruster chips, and begin shoving the errant rock into an orbit that does not coincide with Earth.
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| TILE chip. |
The only drawback to these ion thrusters are their requirements for electricity. Near the Sun this can be supplied in copious amounts by solar panels. When you get out beyond the orbit of Mars it becomes a problem.
Perhaps the ultimate star drive will turn out to be ion thruster chips hooked up to a giant vat of ionic salt and a small nuclear reactor. With that kind of set up, maybe we could check out what’s going on at Alpha Centauri within the next 50 years.
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