#701 – Electric Propulsion with Todd Bailey
The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
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Exploring Zinc as an Innovative Propellant in Space Propulsion Systems
This chapter discusses the potential of zinc as a propellant for Hall Effect thrusters, comparing its advantages to traditional gases like xenon and argon. It highlights the challenges and engineering hurdles of using zinc while showcasing its efficiency, safety, and cost-effectiveness in space propulsion systems.
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Welcome back Todd Bailey of Starlight Engines, now Muon Space! (11 years later)
- Todd was on Episode 194 of The Amp Hour, when he was consulting in the art and design space and building instruments like Where the Party At (WTPA). He was designing ‘robot doors’ for Calvin Klein’s house, discussed last time.
- Through Andy Reitano, Todd learned about a role at Lockheed Martin (a US defence company) working on sonar for submarines.
- “What a good job is”
- Fun
- Lucrative
- Skills / teach you
- Todd, Andy, and other Lockheed Martin friends worked on the VEC9 discussed in ep194
- Clearance was required to work on sonar
- Military electronics had some differences from his past work, but Todd was interestingly complementary of requirements driven design / waterfall
- Chris and Todd were hanging out in a bar before he moved over to working on space and Todd mentioned he wanted to be Zefram Cochrane and do interesting things that matter (in space).
- Star Trek First Contact (gah, I said generations)
- Past guest Shawn Meehan talked to Todd and that’s how he started working at the “stealth space startup” at the time
- Astra
- HBO (not Netflix) special called Wild Wild Space
- Other past guests of the show who were at Astra include Charles Aylward and Jeri Ellsworth
- Silicon Valley Startup
- “When the heavens went on sale” (book)
- Commercial space by SpaceX
- Rocket Lab was second
- “Fail on stage”
- Booster state of that rocket motor control
- Electric turbo pump
- Delphin engine
- Cryogenic / feedback was hard
- Alameda indoor test facility
- Meant to fit in shipping container (8×8.5×40 ft)
- System design and market requirements (launches don’t want small rockets)
- Working remote
- No place like home Jim Williams essay
- Leaving Astra
- Staying in the trenches
- Rocket Lab
- 3rd stage “Kick stage, now known as “Photon“
- Things you can work on in space
- Radios
- Sensors
- Power
- Electric propulsion (EP)
- Apollo fusion – Alex Zannos (Contemporary) and Mike Cassidy (CEO)
- After working on fusion didn’t have legs, they switched to working on Hall effect thrusters
- “Low earth orbit is 50% of the way to anywhere in the solar system”
- Rocket equation
- Stage fires then falls off
- Kick stage is 3rd stage
- Accelerating an ion beam
- Delta V book
- Rocket efficiency
- “Seconds of ISP” How much mass do you use to go distance
- Asteroid mining
- Who buys EP?
- SpaceX built their own Argon thruster
- Torque rods / reaction wheels
- Apollo successfully pivoted
- Acquired by Astra space / finished the apollo constellation engine
- In 2022, Todd and his cofounder Mark Hopkins started Starlight Engines after some initial proof points and then fundraising
- Had opinions about EP
- Goebels and Katz textbooks about EP
- Busek electric propulsion is a family business that has tried all kinds of EP. Run by Vlad Ruby & son Pete.
- Starlight is based on solid Zinc propellant
- Traditionally it’s Xenon
- “The honda civic of hall effect sensor systems”
- The atomic mass of Zinc is light
- “Lickable EP”
- Discharge converter runs the ion beam
- Custom magnetics
- 300W – 800W
- 28V spacecraft bus
- “Plume divergence”
- Need to go from solid to gas
- Cathode is a thermionic emitter “Like a tube amp”, it emits to boil off electrons
- Zinc gets caught in electron cloud, knocks an electron off to make ions, ejected from a positively charged plate nearby.
- Novel propellent is a differentiator
- Starlight had a scrappy factor, like they built their own vacuum chamber (for 15K!)
- The device is not known to be operational in space yet (they sell it but don’t operate it, so it’d be tough to know)
- “Give the first one away”
- Have sold 4 propulsion systems
- Muon space needed a propulsion system and instead decided to buy the company. They weren’t put off by “two guys in a garage and contractors”.
- Muon builds things like fire detection satellites
- For more info about their past work and see pictures of the plumes, check out Starlightengines.com
- To see the new things they’ll be working on, check out Muon space
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