/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9941874
No moving parts does not necessarily translate to lower maintenance cost. You could still get things like bug strikes necessitating cleaning of the all the fragile electrodes and wires that ionocraft are typically made of. Also arcing can cause damage
>> the only thing stopping it is a suitable power source
Bullshit, for ionocraft it's their low thrust density. You just can't make as much thrust in the same area as a propeller no matter how much power you have. At some point air just breaks down and all your power goes through a few electric arcs damaging everything.

>> whether or not shielding would be needed depends on the type of fuel
All practical power reactors today use nuclear fission. Fission generates NEUTRONS and there ain't any way around this or it ain't fission. Neutrons are highly penetrating necessitating the use of lots of shielding.
>> fuel cycle
Doesn't matter worth a damn, all fission fuel cycles make NEUTRONS. And no, we sure as hell don't have scant data on fuel cycles. Barring exotic matter or fusion, no new fuel cycle will change the fact that atomic nuclei are small. Meaning we need to generate a shitton of neutrons just to sustain fission and that it will always be hard to shield stuff from neutrons
>>explodes about 2-3 thousand times per minute
Of course, but nuclear bombs are only able to explode once
>>9941910
I am assuming this massive brainlet was referring to ionocraft, which can generate enough thrust to knock over a jenga tower, but barely more than that. They work completely fucking differently than hall thrusters. You charge up air with a wire, this air gets attracted to a plate with opposite charge and bounces off. Pic related. They actually could be more efficient than jet engines in terms of power per unit thrust, however, they need a larger surface area to do so

There are also other plasma propulsion techniques out there for moving air in an inefficient manner, but they aren't worth discussing.