Electric Propulsion - choueiriJPP04a
Electric Propulsion - choueiriJPP04a
Electric Propulsion - choueiriJPP04a
Nomenclature What makes the history of EP a bit unlike that of most aerospace
A = beam cross-sectional area technologies is that despite EP’s recent, albeit belated, acceptance
a = vehicle acceleration by the spacecraft community, it still has not been used for the appli-
i ≡ p/V = current per unit vehicle mass cation originally foreseen in the dreams of its earliest forefathers,
j = current density namely, the systematic human exploration of the planets. The irony
Mv = vehicle mass of still falling short of that exalted goal while much ingenuity has
ṁ = propellant mass flow rate been expended on inventing, evolving, and diversifying EP concepts
P = input electric power can be attributed to two problems that were likely unforeseeable to
p ≡ P/Mv = input electric power per unit vehicle mass even the most prescient of the early originators.
T = thrust The first problem is EP’s decades-long role as the technological
u ex = rocket exhaust velocity “prince in waiting” of spacecraft propulsion. Despite the relatively
V = voltage early maturity of some EP concepts, their systematic use on com-
η = thrust efficiency mercial spacecraft was delayed until the last two decades of the
20th century. A measure of this forced detainment can be gleaned
from a hypothetical contrast to the history of atmospheric flight, in
which the demonstration of powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903
W HEN writing history, it is tempting to identify thematic pe-
riods in the often continuous stream of events under review
and label them as “eras,” or to point to certain achievements and call
would not have led to acceptance of the airplane until 1940. This
retardation is doubtless caused, partially, by the technological con-
them “milestones.” Keeping in mind that such demarcations and des- servatism that is endemic in the spacecraft industry, where more
ignations inevitably entail some arbitrariness, we shall not resist this traditional and well-proven propulsion systems have been, perhaps
temptation. Indeed, the history of electric propulsion (EP), which understandably given the immense financial stakes, difficult to sup-
now spans almost a full century, particularly lends itself to a subdi- plant. Breaching this psychological barrier did not fully occur in the
vision that epitomizes the progress of the field from its start as the West until around 1991. It was not only the result of an overdue real-
dream realm of a few visionaries, to its transformation into the con- ization on the part of aerospace planners of the cost-savings benefits
cern of large corporations. We shall therefore idealize the continuous of EP and a demonstration that the associated risks were well worth
history of the field as a series of five essentially consecutive eras: taking, but also to the the acceptance and success EP has had in the
1) The Era of Visionaries: 1906–1945 Soviet Union. That the first electrically propelled spacecraft to go
2) The Era of Pioneers: 1946–1956 into deep space did not do so until almost a century after the first EP
3) The Era of Diversification and Development: 1957–1979 conceptions is a fact that would have disheartened their visionary
4) The Era of Acceptance: 1980–1992 authors.
5) The Era of Application: 1993–present The second and far more hindering problem that stood, and re-
This is not to say that the latter eras were lacking in visionaries mains, in the way of EP-enabled human exploration of the planets,
or pioneers, nor that EP was not used on spacecraft until 1993 or is the frustrating lack of high levels of electric power in space.
that important conceptual developments did not occur at all until U.S. efforts to develop nuclear power sources for spacecraft have
the 1960s, but rather that there is a discernible character to the been fraught with repeating cycles of budgetary, political, and pro-
nature of EP-related exploration during these consecutive periods of grammatic setbacks over the past five decades, despite considerable
EP’s relatively long history. The preceding classification is intended technical achievements in programs that were either discontinued
to give a framework to our discussion, which will be useful for or did not come to fruition in a space flight [2]. Lyndon B. Johnson
comprehending EP’s peculiar and often checkered evolution [1]. The was the U.S. president when the last and, to date, only U.S. fission
present paper, which represents the first installment of our historical [3] nuclear power source was launched in space (SNAP-10A; 650
review, deals with the first two eras, which correspond to the first We output; launched 3 April 1965). The record of the most pow-
50 years of the history of the field. erful nuclear power source in space is still held at about 5 kWe by
Edgar Choueiri is Director of Princeton University’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory
and Director of Princeton’s Engineering Physics Program. He is Associate Professor in Applied Physics at the
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Princeton University and Associated Faculty at the De-
partment of Astrophysical Sciences (Program in Plasma Physics). He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and
is the author of more than one hundred papers on analytical, experimental, and numerical problems in electric
and plasma propulsion, plasma physics and dynamics, instabilities and turbulence in collisional plasmas, plasma
thruster numerical modeling, and applied mathematics. He has served as Principal Investigator on more than
twenty contracts and grants from NASA, Air Force and other funding agencies. He is an Associate Fellow of the
AIAA and is the Chairman of the AIAA Electric Propulsion Technical Committee for 2002–2004.
Received 17 November 2003; revision received 18 December 2003; accepted for publication 18 December 2003. Copyright c 2004 by E. Y. Choueiri.
Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission. Copies of this paper may be made for personal or internal use,
on condition that the copier pay the $10.00 per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; include the code
0748-4658/04 $10.00 in correspondence with the CCC.
193
194 CHOUEIRI
the 1987 flight of the Soviet Topaz 1 fission reactor onboard the through the fog, I can see prospects which are so intriguing and
Cosmos 1818 and 1867 spacecraft. This 5-kWe record makes the important it is doubtful that anyone dreams of them today (Ref. 8,
present prospects of a 10-MWe electrically propelled piloted space- p. 28).
ship seem as dim as six 100-W lightbulbs compared to a fully lit
Yankee Stadium. The “official” [7] history of modern rocketry and astronautics starts
As much as the realization of viable nuclear power generation on in 1903 with Tsiolkovsky’s (eventually) celebrated article “Investi-
spacecraft is critical to the fulfillment of EP’s ultimate role, we shall gation of Universal Space by Means of Reactive Devices, [8] from
not discuss it further here. Although its current chapter is unfolding which the preceding quote is taken. That article contains the deriva-
now, and not without the usual optimism [4], the history of placing tion of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, which is the most funda-
powerful nuclear power sources in space has not been on the whole mental mathematical expression in the field of space propulsion
a success story. Suffice it to say that when that history is documented and the encapsulation of the raison d’être of EP (see our EP review
it would make that of EP, in comparison, one of steady and linear article3 for an introduction). Eight years later, in 1911, we come
progress. across Tsiolkovsky’s first published [9] mention, albeit germinal, of
Despite these major obstacles to its development, the history of the idea of electric propulsion: “It is possible that in time we may
EP turned out to be a success story: Almost 200 solar-powered use electricity to produce a large velocity for the particles ejected
satellites in Earth orbit and a handful of spacecraft beyond Earth’s from a rocket device” (Ref. 8, p. 95). The italics are ours and are
gravitational influence have benefited to date from the mass savings meant to underscore the suitability of that quote as any modern dic-
engendered by EP. tionary’s definition of electric propulsion. The subsequent sentence
Before starting our review of that history, we wish to state some in the same text,
assumptions and define a few self-imposed limitations. These might
limit the scope of our coverage, but will hopefully render the review It is known at the present time that the cathode rays in Crookes’
tube, just like the rays of radium, are accompanied by a flux of
easier to assimilate and bound its expansiveness. Specifically, we electrons whose individual mass is 4,000 times less than the mass
shall assume that the reader is acquainted with the major classifica- of the helium atom, while the velocities obtained are 30,000-
tions of EP systems (electrothermal, electrostatic, electromagnetic) 100,000 km/s i.e. 6,000 to 20,000 times greater than that of the
and somewhat familiar with the basic features of the main EP con- ordinary products of combustion flying from our reactive tube.
cepts. The uninitiated reader might benefit from reading our recent
article3 or referring to the predecessor textbook.4 To keep the flow of is quite revealing. It points to cathode rays—one of the most in-
the main discussion unimpeded by mathematical derivations, ancil- triguing problems in physics in the few years preceding that writing
lary information, or technical and historical details, we shall relegate [10]—as the source of inspiration for the idea of electric propulsion.
these to endnotes, which will be frequent and often extensive. It is not difficult, in retrospect, to appreciate how someone con-
Furthermore, we shall admittedly favor for inclusion work per- cerned with increasing rocket exhaust velocity would be inspired
formed predominantly in the United States. We will however men- by the findings, well known at that time, of physicists working on
tion, without any pretension to be all inclusive or exhaustive, a num- cathode rays, such as J.J. Thomson’s pronouncement in 1906:
ber of seminal works and important advancements that occurred
outside the United States and provide references, whenever possi- . . . in all cases when the cathode rays are produced in tubes their
ble, to publications where these developments have been described. velocity is much greater than the velocity of any other moving body
We hope this U.S.-centric history will not lessen the essential ap- with which we are acquainted. It is, for example, many thousand
preciation that without the contributions of workers in the former times the average velocity with which the molecules of hydrogen
are moving at ordinary temperatures, or indeed at any temperature
Soviet Union (both in its present and former incarnations), Europe, yet realized.13
and Japan, EP would, at best, still be in its adolescence. We will
also undoubtedly be forced, for practical reasons, to omit the names This clearly stated disparity between the velocity of electrostati-
of some individuals whose contributions might well outweigh those cally accelerated particles and that of thermally energized atoms
of some of the people we do mention. Such omissions will be more was bound to capture the imagination of someone considering the
frequent when discussing the latter eras in which the sheer number problem of rocket propulsion.
of outstanding contributions makes any obsessive attempts to fair- A casual and modern reader might wonder why Tsiolkovsky was
ness or inclusiveness futile. Except in a few instances, we shall not considering a flux of electrons (as opposed to ions) to be useful for
be concerned with the achievements made on EP subsystems (e.g., propulsion when he knew of their exceedingly small mass (and thus
power conditioning, mass feeding, propellant storage, etc.) nor can small momentum flux). The answer is simply that only electrons
we attempt any fair accounting of the milestones in ancillary, al- were known to attain such high velocities (as per Thomson’s pre-
beit critical, fields (e.g., low-thrust trajectories, mission planning, ceding quote) and that the concept of the ion, as an atomic-sized
etc.). Instead, we will concentrate on the evolution of the EP con- particle possessing a net positive charge, had not yet been fully es-
cepts themselves. Also, we shall focus more on technical milestones tablished, although much work and debate was ongoing at that time
and less on programmatic developments (e.g., histories of various on the nature of the positively charged “rays” observed in cathode
NASA and U.S. Air Force EP programs) even though the attainment ray tubes [11]. In that sense, Tsiolkovsky came as close as he could
of the former often depends on the success of the latter. have, given the state of physical knowledge in 1911, to envisioning
Finally we should mention that our intent is not to merely com- the ionic rocket. In sum, it was his discovery of the central im-
pile a factual and dry chronicle of events and accomplishments, but portance of rocket exhaust velocity to space propulsion combined
rather to present a critical history that does not shy away from being with his awareness of the existence of extremely fast particles (al-
analytical and reflective when appropriate [5]. beit electrons) in cathode ray tubes, that led to his almost prophetic
anticipation of EP.
I. Era of Visionaries: 1906–1945 Tsiolkovsky was a self-taught schoolteacher who lacked the clout
It is difficult to think who in aerospace history, perhaps even in the of the graduate scientists who dominated the scientific world of
history of modern science and technology, embodies the quintessen- his day. His works, almost exclusively theoretical, were originally
tial qualities of the archetypical visionary more than Konstantin Ed- published at his own expense, and many of his earlier writings re-
uardovitch Tsiolkovsky [6] (1857–1935). It is also difficult to find mained in the form of unpublished manuscripts decades after they
a more vivid encapsulation of the essence of visionary work than were penned. His intellectual output was prodigious until his death,
his own words: and he was vindicated by the fact that numerous accomplishments
in modern astronautics can be traced to his ideas [12]. However, de-
This work of mine is far from considering all of the aspects of the spite his detailed calculations and quantitative analysis in the field
problem and does not solve any of the practical problems asso- of chemical rockets and astronautics, he did not attempt any ana-
ciated with its realization; however, in the distant future, looking lytical study of the application of electricity to rocket propulsion.
CHOUEIRI 195
their velocity is greater than need be; the larger the velocity, the
greater the amount of energy that we must expend to obtain the
same reaction . . . ” (Ref. 9, p. 23). The last sentence demonstrates
that Kondratyuk was fully aware of Eq. (3) in endnote 22 and its
practical implications. That he fully appreciated the advantage of
accelerating more massive particles is evidenced by a schematic
that he added, apparently at a later date (see endnote 31), to the
same section of the manuscript and which might well be the first
conceptualization of a colloid thruster. Accompanying the simple
schematic, Kondratyuk had written (most likely at a later date than
1919 but definitely before 1938):
of light c and when the power supply mass is made to vanish. (This desirable. After establishing that ion propulsion was admissible, the
case would then correspond to that of a standard chemical rocket.) authors proceeded to evaluate if it was possible.
Although the paper focused on the reduction (from the classically 2) It unambiguously established the desirability of a propellant
predicted value) of the terminal velocity of the vehicle when u ex is with high atomic weight by recognizing that high current is far more
a significant fraction of c, what caught Stuhlinger’s attention was burdensome than high voltage (see endnote 22).
a brief calculation of the exhaust velocity that leads to the maxi- 3) It recognized the essential role of beam neutralization and antic-
mum vehicle terminal velocity and, in particular the demonstration ipated correctly that it could be effectively accomplished with elec-
that the corresponding ratio of the propellant mass to the total ini- trons ejected from an auxiliary heated cathode or a similar source.
tial mass approaches a constant (which Ackeret calculates to be ap- With the preceding accomplishments the obstacles (enumerated in
proximately 4). This result indicated to Stuhlinger that EP-propelled Sec. I) that had obstructed the conceptualizations of the early vi-
vehicles lend themselves to well-defined optimizations—a topic to sionaries were removed, once and for all.
which he would later devote a whole chapter in his 1964 classic Where the study fell short, however, was in its final verdict on
Ion Propulsion31 (and in which he showed that the aforementioned the feasibility of ion propulsion. Although obviously enchanted by
ratio is 3.92 and, more importantly, that it is independent of the its possibilities, Shepherd and Cleaver concluded, albeit reluctantly
energy conversion factor and any other parameter of the propulsion [43], that the ion rocket was too impractical in view of the massive
system). power requirements it demanded. It is worthwhile, in the spirit of
While chemical rocket research was flourishing through the vig- our critical historical review, to examine how such a dismissal was
orous postwar research and design programs that sprung up in the arrived at.
United States and the Soviet Union, EP was still in the same co- The key to understanding this conclusion lies in the authors’ cal-
coon where Oberth had placed it in 1929, waiting quietly for the culation of the power per unit vehicle mass p required to effect an
pioneers to hatch it. A measure of this disparity can be gleaned acceleration a of 0.01 gravity to a space vehicle using an ion rocket
from a review33 of the state of the art of rocket propulsion, pub- with an exhaust velocity u ex of 100 km/s. This is simply given by
lished in 1947, in which, after more than a dozen and a half pages the formula [44] p = au ex /2η, which, even for a thrust efficiency of
extolling the progress in chemical propulsion, EP is dismissed in a unity, yields the exorbitant estimate of 5 kW/kg. Not surprisingly, a
mere paragraph on the grounds that multiton interplanetary vehicle with such a propulsion system could
not be deemed feasible. However, had Shepherd and Cleaver set their
. . . the energy required to separate the raw “fuel” into ions suitable ambitions much lower, say, on a 500-kg robotic spacecraft requir-
for acceleration away from the rocket would be rather large, and ing only an acceleration of 10−5 gravity, they would have found
this energy would be wasted. At the present time the intensity of
the beams of charged particles from existing accelerators is far too
(using the same relations in their paper or equivalently those in
small to furnish any appreciable thrust. endnote 44) that even a 70%-efficient ion engine, using xenon with
u ex = 30 km/s, could accomplish a quite useful interplanetary, albeit
Although both of these statements were true, and in fact remain robotic, mission (increment its velocity by 3 km/s over a year) while
so even today, they ironically mark the eve of the great dawning of consuming a mere 50 kg of propellant and about 1 kW of power (at a
electric propulsion, which we can confidently date as March 1949 beam current of 1.75 A). In other words they could have anticipated
when the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society published a mission very much like Deep Space 1 that was launched half a
the fourth installment34 of a series of articles titled “The Atomic century later, flew by two asteroids and a comet, and was a resound-
Rocket” by the British physicists L.R. Shepherd and A.V. Cleaver ing success. Therefore, their negative verdict was as a result of their
[40]. assumption of an unfavorably high required vehicle acceleration of
In the previous three installments of that work35−37 (published 0.01 g.
in September and November 1948 and January 1949), which con- Luckily for the evolution of EP, a verdict opposite to that of
stitute a ground-breaking treatise in the field of nuclear thermal Shepherd and Cleaver was arrived at by another pioneer, the Ameri-
propulsion, Shepherd and Cleaver expounded authoritatively on the can astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer [45] (1914–1997) who, two years
requirements and prospects of rockets that use nuclear fission en- later in a paper read before the Second International Congress on As-
ergy to heat their propellants. They concluded that until the advent tronautics in September of 1951, found that ion propulsion was per-
of nuclear fuels with more favorable properties, materials with ex- fectly feasible. As he explained in a footnote to the journal version of
ceptionally high mechanical strength and melting point, and reac- that paper,38 published in 1952, his opposite verdict stemmed from
tor designs with advanced heat-transfer methods, the prospects of his assumption of a required vehicle acceleration (a ≈ 3 × 10−4 g)
nuclear thermal rockets would remain dim. This impasse proved that was “some 30 times” less than that assumed by Shepherd and
felicitous for the evolution of EP, as the authors then turned their Cleaver [46].
attention, in the fourth and last installment, from what they called Spitzer, at the time of his 1951 presentation, was an outsider to as-
the “thermodynamic” scheme (which they reckoned could a best tronautics and was not aware of Oberth’s influential book, the fourth
produce an exhaust velocity of 10 km/s) to the electric one. If us- paper of Shepherd and Cleaver, nor of any previous thoughts on ion
ing the nuclear core to directly heat the propellant was fraught with propulsion. It was, in fact, L.R. Shepherd himself who later attracted
many difficulties, what about using it to generate electric power to his attention to these works [47]. Despite Spitzer’s lack of concern
accelerate the propellant electrostatically? for the priority of his ideas [48], he should be credited for at least
Shepherd and Cleaver’s study did not deal with aspects of ion two contributions to EP’s history. First his contrasting evaluation of
rocket [41] design, although it did envision an electrostatic accel- the feasibility of ion propulsion opened a door to ion propulsion that
erator that would produce an exhaust ion beam (as in the modern could have been closed for a long time by Shepherd and Cleaver’s
version), as opposed to an exhaust with a stream in which charge has less propitious evaluation. Second, although the space-charge lim-
been injected (as imagined by the early visionaries). Instead it pre- ited current law had been known from the work of C. D. Child40 and
sented the first quantitative analysis of the feasibility of electrostatic I. Langmuir41 for about 40 years, it was Spitzer who first applied
propulsion for interplanetary missions [42] and marked a number it to calculate the general design parameters of an ion rocket [49].
of notable accomplishments: He also proposed the thruster’s ion accelerating potential to be set
1) It articulated the antagonism, inherent to EP, between the power up by “two fine-mesh wire screens” placed a small distance apart,
supply (and power rejection) mass penalty that must be paid to and he emphasized the necessity of beam neutralization, which he
produce thrust at high exhaust velocities and the propellant mass suggested could be effected through thermionic electron emission
penalty that would be incurred by a (high-thrust) vehicle with low from the outer screen.
exhaust velocity (as we discussed in endnote 21). It then pointed Although Spitzer’s might well be the earliest quantitative descrip-
out that for missions in field-free space or stable orbits the required tion of a “gridded” ion thruster in the literature, it is worthwhile to
acceleration would be low enough to render, in principle, the high mention that EP’s pioneers were, by that date, benefitting from sig-
exhaust velocity (10–100 km/s) of the ion rocket admissible, even nificant advances during the 1940s in the development of ion sources
CHOUEIRI 199
for atomic and molecular beam work. These included the devel- III. Some Concluding Comments on the First 50 Years
opment of efficient sources such as the so-called Finkelstein ion There are a few aspects of the history of EP up to 1956 that are
source42 in 1940, other high-current steady-state sources43−45 and worth emphasizing:
even electrodeless high-frequency sources46 in the late 1940s. When First, even the more analytical contributions were mainly con-
introducing his ideas on ion propulsion, Spitzer acknowledged38 that cerned with the feasibility of EP rather than with detailed aspects
“the production of intense ion currents ha[d] been extensively stud- of the devices. This is of course to be expected given the infancy of
ied in the past decade.” astronautics and related technologies at that time.
Citations to laboratory ion source work from that era abound in a Second, with the exception of Glushko and his exploding wire
1952 paper47 by the British scientist H. Preston-Thomas in which electrothermal thruster, the focus of the early EP practitioners was
an EP system consisting of a large array of ion “guns” was chosen almost exclusively on the electrostatic branch of electric propulsion.
as the enabling technology for a fission-powered planetary “tug- This can be traced to EP’s roots in cathode-ray physics whose steady-
boat” that would bring to Earth orbit rare metals from extraterrestrial state gaseous discharges, with their enigmatic monochromatic glow,
sources. Although this work, like its antecedents, did not yet describe captivated many of the best minds of the late 19th century, and cast
in any detail the design of ion engines, it is of historical relevance their spell, with reports of electrostatically produced high particle
because of a number of enlightened, even if qualitative, projections: velocities, on the imagination of EP’s progenitors. Experimental
It foresaw the importance of grid erosion by impinging ions, the magnetohydrodynamics (and its corollary, electromagnetic acceler-
role of charge-to-mass ratio distribution in performance, and the ation of plasmas), on the other hand, did not fully emerge until the
benefits of using radio-frequency (RF) electrodeless discharges as second half of the last century.
ionization sources [50]. The latter idea anticipated the presently Third, the primary concern of the early EP visionaries and pio-
well-established EP variant: RF ion thrusters. neers was with the prospect of human-piloted interplanetary travel,
Before we follow these germinal ideas to their burgeoning in which remained the raison d’être of EP. Perhaps the restless imagi-
the work of Stuhlinger, we should mention two contemporary ad- nation of these men could not foresee the value of the relatively more
vancements that were made in the new field of low-thrust trajectory sedentary near-Earth commercial satellites and robotic missions or,
analysis. Although a review of this ancillary field will remain out- more likely, were not so much inspired by them [53]. Perhaps some
side our main focus, these early milestones deserve a place in our of this bias can be traced to the science fiction and fantasy literature
story as they were instrumental in establishing the veracity of EP’s (especially of Jules Verne) that sparked much of the early thought
claims of feasibility and superiority. In 1950, G.F. Forbes published on modern rocketry. It seems unlikely that the minds of these men
an abridged version49 of his Massachusetts Institute of Technology in their youth could have been equally captured by stories of space
Masters’ thesis in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Soci- exploration with no human explorers. This predilection for human-
ety and started in earnest the field of low-thrust trajectory analy- centered exploration, along with the postwar promise of nuclear
sis. Forbes’ paper showed, for the first time, how low-thrust space fission, colored the conceptualization of EP as the domain of mas-
vehicles can accomplish certain space maneuvers more efficiently sive nuclear-powered, human-piloted spaceships with initial masses
than their high-thrust counterparts. This was followed, in 1953, by of hundreds of tons and power levels of many megawatts. It was only
H.S. Tsien39 whose low-thrust orbital mechanics work (see endnote with the advent of solar cells and the relatively mundane interests in
46) vindicated Spitzer’s adoption of the low (10−4 g) vehicle accel- commercial telecommunications and military surveillance brought
eration that had led him to reclaim the feasibility of ion propulsion. about by the prosperity and paranoia of the cold-war era that the
By 1954 the stage was set for Stuhlinger to launch the field of EP sights were lowered and EP ushered into its later eras of acceptance
on a trajectory of continuous development and sophistication. His and application.
first paper,50 published that year, differed starkly from all previous Fourth, over the first half-century of the history of EP, there was
publications on the subject in its depth, detail, and the extent of the a virtual absence of dominant institutions [54] vis-a-vis individuals.
lasting contributions it made. The paper presented a holistic design This can be attributed to the same reasons as those behind the bias
of an electrically propelled spaceship including details of the ion for human-piloted spaceships. Although the development and ma-
thruster and the power supply (turboelectric generators driven by turity of EP would later result from the collective efforts of workers
a solar concentrator) and rules for performance optimization. In it in various institutions, the first more leisurely five decades will al-
we see for the first time a number of new ideas, rules of thumb, ways be recalled as the dominion of far-sighted individuals such as
and design guidelines that would become central in the field. In Goddard, Oberth, Shepherd, Cleaver, Spitzer, and Stuhlinger.
particular, he introduced and showed the importance of the specific
power as an essential parameter for EP analysis; he demonstrated
that for given specific power and mission requirements there is an Acknowledgments
optimum exhaust velocity; he showed that the charge-to-mass ratio The author is grateful to a number of individuals for their in-
of the particles should be as low as possible to minimize the beam valuable help: Robert G. Jahn of Princeton University, for carefully
size (see endnote 22); he advocated the suitability of the contact reading the manuscript and suggesting a number of corrections and
ionization process to produce ions and pointed out the advantages changes that greatly improved its accuracy and readability. Mott
of alkali atoms, in particular cesium; and he calculated that ion Linn, Librarian at the Clark University Archives, where many of
propulsion, even with the contemporary state of technologies, could Goddard’s original manuscripts are kept, for supplying copies of the
lead to vehicle acceleration levels (10−4 g) that recent low-thrust relevant pages of Goddard’s handwritten notebooks. John Blandino
trajectory studies had deemed useful. of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for his help in carrying out
That paper, and two following51,52 published in 1955 and 1956 on-site searches of those archives, for contributing a number of cor-
in which Stuhlinger described a similar vehicle but with a more ad- rections and for engaging the author in insightful and fruitful discus-
vantageous nuclear reactor, mark the culmination of an era in which sions about the material. Rostislav Spektor for translating passages
the main goal was to evaluate the feasibility of EP [51]. This con- from Russian sources. Edward Wladas of the Engineering Library
ceptually demonstrated feasibility would now take ion propulsion at Princeton University, and the indefatigable staff of the interlibrary
from an intellectual pastime of a few prescient scientists, almost loan office there, for their continuous supply of reference material.
all of whom, incidentally, never ventured again into the field of EP Deborah Brown for her cross-Atlantic assistance. Neal Graneau and
[52], to a serious and vibrant technological and scientific discipline Paul Smith of Oxford University, for accommodating the author’s
with its own dedicated practitioners. It must be said, in that context, sabbatical stay. The staff of Oxford’s Radcliffe Science Library for
that Stuhlinger was the first and, for more than a decade, the lead- their professional help. Ron Daniel and the Fellows of Brasenose
ing figure among these professional EP specialists. He thus played College in Oxford, for their gracious hospitality. Last but not least
both the role of a pioneer at the conclusion of an era of conceptual the author wishes to thank Vigor Yang, Chief Editor of the Journal
exploration and that of a leading investigator in the following era of of Propulsion and Power, for his support and patience throughout
development. this project.
200 CHOUEIRI
[18] This was not the first time the young Goddard considered with the square of the ion’s charge-to-mass ratio and emphasizes the
the application of cathode rays to propulsion. A few months earlier, benefits of heavier propellants.
in another entry in the same notebook (Ref. 18, pp. 38–41), dated [23] There are 214 patents in Goddard’s name.
18 February 1906, he conceived a device (which he also illustrated [24] In an autobiographical article written in 1927 and published
schematically) in which two parallel tubes, one producing (nega- in 1959 (Ref. 17), Goddard stated that the experimental work which
tive) cathode rays and the other (positive) canal rays, were thought checked the conclusions set forth in that patent was carried out at
to yield a net reactive force. This would seem to be the earliest Clark University by two students during 1916–1917.
documentation of an electric rocket concept. However, a close ex- [25] Although the word “space” was not mentioned in the patent
amination of his notes reveals that he did not discuss the device in (instead Goddard stated that the intended application was “jet
terms of the rocket effect, that is, reaction caused by mass expulsion, propulsion”), there is little doubt that Goddard, who was well aware
but rather in terms of creating a momentum imbalance. Specifically, of the smallness of the reactive forces inherent in electrostatic ac-
Goddard stated that the cathode and anode rays would “simply serve celeration, was thinking of spacecraft propulsion as the ultimate
as ways to increase an effect which is unbalanced.” These ideas of application. (This assumption would best be ascertained by exper-
propulsion trough unbalanced internal forces were constant on his imental measurements or more detailed description Goddard and
mind since his first thoughts on the subject while in a cherry tree15 his students might have made with an actual device; however, we
in 1899. He did not totally give up such a concept, it seems, until did not find any such documentation in the Goddard’s Archives at
4 March 1907 when, after conceiving another device where charged Clark University.) It is relevant to mention in this context that while
particle acceleration in opposing direction was to produce a mo- Goddard often wrote in his notebooks about the technical prob-
mentum imbalance, he wrote in his notebook (Ref. 18, p. 150): lems of space travel he rarely mentioned this ultimate application in
“The device . . . cannot be used, as the two opposite accelerations official communications and confined his stated goals to the “reach-
on each end of the condenser battery would neutralize each other,” ing of high altitudes” for scientific studies. Later in his career he
and concluded with the insight; “A simpler plan would be to expel stated21 : “I regard it as most unfortunate that the interplanetary as-
the electrons after they had acquired a significantly great velocity.” pect of rocket theory was seized upon and sensationalized. This has
[19] It was not until Planck and Minkowski published their ideas discouraged public confidence and in some cases has turned away
on special relativity in 1908 that Einstein’s famous 1905 publications serious support from the researches that need to be carried on into
on the subject were taken seriously. In 1905 Einstein was only a the fundamental problems of rocket and jet propulsion.” It is often
“technical expert third class” at the Bern patent office. said that Goddard never fully recovered from the humiliation of a
[20] Although even late-19th century cathode-ray tubes accel- 1920 New York Times editorial22 in which his ideas on the use of
erated electrons to speeds that are a fraction of that of light, the rockets in the vacuum of space were severely ridiculed.
technology of powerful radio-frequency sources capable of acceler- [26] U.S. Patent No. 1,102,653, “Rocket Apparatus”; application
ating electrons through linear resonance accelerators to speeds very filed 9 October 1912; patent granted 7 July 1914.
close to that of light was not developed until after 1940. [27] A possible reason why this early electrostatic accelerator
[21] This penalty can be seen by expressing the thrust-to-power was overlooked as such is that the patent description deals with a
ratio T /P of an EP system as a function of its exhaust velocity. number of aspects of “electrified jets of gas” only one of which is
Using the definition of thrust efficiency electrostatic acceleration.
1 [28] There is presently no extensive biography, in English, of
η≡ 2
ṁu 2ex P (1) this most obscure of early thinkers on astronautics. The following
events of his life have become known through a recent biograph-
and ical sketch.23 His original name, Alexander Shargei, was changed
to evade the authorities in the course of a woeful life. He landed in
T = ṁu ex (2) prison in Kiev while still in his mother’s womb. After demonstrat-
ing his intellectual brilliance at the gymnasium of his birthplace
we can write town of Poltava in the Ukraine, he was forced to abort his engi-
T /P = 2η/u ex (3) neering education in Kiev to command a machinegun platoon on
the Transcaucasian Front during WWI. He then had a stint with
which shows how raising the exhaust velocity, even at a maximum the White Guard army, was almost killed by the Cheka while try-
thrust efficiency of 1, will incur a power supply mass penalty through ing to escape to Poland, escaped to Siberia where he worked as a
the decrease of the amount of thrust per unit power. This mass mechanic in Novosibirsk, then was caught and served three years
penalty could easily overwhelm the mass savings, as a result of high in a labor camp before being released to work on wind turbines
exhaust velocity, indicated by Tsiolkovksy’s rocket equation. Thrust in Kharkov. He disappeared in late 1941 while on assignment in
with relativistic electron velocities is therefore most expensive from the region of Kaluga, where, coincidentally, Tsiolkovksy had lived
a power supply point of view. and died. Between 1916 and 1927 Kondratyuk managed to write
[22] This might not be directly evident but can easily be seen by down his numerous space-related ideas in four extant manuscripts
using the definitions of thrust, mass flow rate, and current density (Ref. 9, p. 145), only one of which (Ref. 24) was published during
to write his lifetime.
[29] He seemed to have arrived at Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation
T = ṁu ex = ( j/q)m i Au ex (4) independently, predicted the central role of rockets in space explo-
ration, and speculated often qualitatively, but sometimes analytically
and invoking the Child’s law for space-charged limited current den- and quantitatively, on such topics as multistaging, launch aerody-
sity (for an idealized one-dimensional electrostatic accelerator) namics, spacecraft guidance and stability, aerobraking, the use of
1 3 solar energy for propulsion, and the creation of interplanetary bases.
j ∝ (2q/m i ) 2 V 2 d 2 (5) The extent to which these ideas were completely original remains
debatable although Kondratyuk maintained that he did not become
then solving for the exit area A of the accelerator in terms of thrust familiar with the works of Tsiolkovsky and others until 1925.
and exhaust velocity (and not in terms of applied potential as more [30] Tem kto budet chitat,’ chtoby stroit.’ An English translation
commonly done): of that manuscript is available on pp. 15–56 of Ref. 9.
[31] It was not until 1938 that Kondratyuk wrote the date 1918–
A ∝ T d 2 u 4ex (q/m i )2 (6) 1919 on his “To whomsoever will read . . . ” manuscript before he
sent it to his editor (Ref. 9, p. 49). It was obvious from the manuscript
In practice d is limited by design constraints, and the thrust and ex- that there were a number of additions and corrections that Kon-
haust velocity are mission requirements. This leaves the area to scale dratyuk had made at different times. Consequently, even Soviet
202 CHOUEIRI
historians of astronautics, who were often too eager to attribute calculated, once√ the propellant (atomic mas m i ) is chosen, by
exclusive originality to their comrades, have questioned the defini- solving u ex = (2eV /m i ) for V and the corresponding current
tiveness of Kondratyuk’s dates. per unit vehicle mass i from i = p/V = au ex /2ηV . Finally, the
[32] These are often taken to include Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and propellant mass flow rate per unit vehicle mass ṁ is simply
Oberth and, sometimes, Esnault-Pelterie. ṁ ≡ ṁ/Mv = T /Mv u ex = a/u ex . For the example in Shepherd and
[33] This book also contained a chapter called “Electric Space- Cleaver’s paper (a = 0.01 g, u ex = 100 km/s, and mercury pro-
ships,” which is very similar to that appearing in the 1929 book but pellant), the preceding relations yield p ≈ 5 kw/kg, V = 10.4 kV,
with some additional remarks. i = 0.47 A/kg, and ṁ ≈ 1 mg/s/kg.
[34] A measure of the book’s success is its winning the REP- [45] A pioneer on many fronts and a leading astrophysicist,
Hirsch prize coestablished by another pioneer of astronautics, the Spitzer championed fusion research in the united states, authored
French aeronautical engineer and inventor Robert Esnault-Pelterie the plasma physics classic “Physics of Fully Ionized Gases,” made
(1881–1957). substantial contributions to the understanding of stellar dynamics,
[35] On 15 May 1929 Glushko joined Leningrad’s Gas-Dynamics and, a decade before the launch of the first satellite, proposed the
Laboratory (GDL) and organized a subdivision to develop electric development of a space-based telescope that would not be hindered
and liquid rockets and engines.27 This subdivision grew into a pow- by Earth’s atmosphere. He is recognized as the father of the Hub-
erful organization (GDL-OKB), which he led from 1946 to 1974 ble Space Telescope to whose advocacy, design, and development,
and which was a primary developer of rocket engines in the Soviet he contributed immensely. He is also recognized as the father of
Union. From 1974 to 1989, Glushko led NPO Energia whose role the Hubble Space Telescope to whose advocacy, design and devel-
in establishing the supremacy of Soviet launchers is paramount. opment, he contributed immensely. In December of 2003 NASA’s
[36] The relevant passage is only a brief paragraph, but, in fair- Space Infrared Telescope Facility was renamed the Spitzer Space
ness, we should give Radd the credit of thinking of an ion rocket in Telescope in his honor.
which a highly ionized gas is first formed, then ions are extracted [46] Although Spitzer assumed this value, like Shepherd and
and accelerated as a beam, an accelerator that resembles more the Cleaver did theirs, without a priori rationalization he was justi-
modern ion thruster than the “electric wind” devices conceived by fied a posteriori a year later by Tsien39 whose work on low-thrust
Goddard and Oberth. trajectories showed that even lower accelerations (10−5 g) could be
[37] The article ends with the almost oracular pronouncement: used in effecting useful orbital maneuvers in acceptable time.
“Other walls of difficulties shall place themselves in the path of [47] See footnote 3 of Ref. 38.
progress, but with the inevitability comparable to life and death, sci- [48] He stated38 : “The chief purpose of this paper is not to claim
ence will hurdle these impedances until we finally reach the greatest priority for any ideas but to focus attention on what promises to be
of all man’s goals: The Conquest of Space.” the most practical means for interplanetary flight in the near future.”
[38] Born in Niederrimbach Germany in 1913, Stuhlinger re- [49] Spitzer chose nitrogen for propellant for its then supposed
ceived a doctorate in physics at age 23 from the University of Tue- abundance in planetary atmospheres. For an interplanetary space-
bingen. He became an assistant professor at the Berlin Institute ship with an acceleration of 3 × 10−4 g, he calculated, using the
of Technology and continued research on cosmic rays and nuclear same relations presented in endnotes 22 and 44, the following de-
physics until 1941 when he served with the German army on the sign parameters for an ion rocket with u ex = 100 km/s: a power level
Russian front. He was then transferred to the Peenemünde rocket of 1.5 MW, a voltage of 730 V across a gap of 1 mm, and a current
research center where he became a leading member of the German of 2 kA from a beam area of 7.2 m2 .
rocket development team. After the war he came to the United States [50] Another equally ambitious conceptual designer of super-
in 1946 with Wernher von Braun and other German rocket special- spaceships, D.C. Romick, published a design for a 1000-ton ion-
ists, as part of Project Paperclip, to work, first at the U.S. Army at beam propelled spaceship in a 1954 paper48 whose main relevance
Fort Bliss, Texas, where he test fired captured German V-2 missiles to our historical review is that it contained the first reference to the
for the Army, then starting in 1950, at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal problem of beam divergence.
in Huntsville, Alabama. He received the Exceptional Civilian Ser- [51] Belonging to the same era is the work of D. B. Langmuir
vice Award for his part in the launch of Explorer 1 and after the and J. H. Irving of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (which is
Marshall Space Center was formed in 1960, he became its Asso- the RW of the TRW corporation formed later in 1958 when Ramo-
ciate Director of Science. He retired in 1976 and continues being a Wooldridge merged with Thompson Products Company of Cleve-
champion for space exploration and a strong advocate for a human land, Ohio) published only in limited-release technical reports.53,54
mission to Mars. In that work we encounter for the first time the idea of using a vari-
[39] Jakob Ackeret, a Swiss pioneer of aerodynamics, was one of able exhaust velocity to optimize the performance of en electrically
the leaders of the theoretical and experimental study of supersonic propelled vehicle.31
flows about airfoils and channels. He made major and fundamental [52] This statement applies to Goddard, Oberth, Shepherd,
contributions to the fluid mechanics of gas turbines and supersonic Cleaver, Spitzer, and Preston-Thomas.
flight. [53] An evidence that tends to support the second half of this
[40] Shepherd was a nuclear physicist at the Cavendish Labora- argument is the case of Stuhlinger who got to be a witness to, and
tory, and Cleaver became the head of Rolls Royce Rocket Division. a leading participant in, the age of robotic space exploration but
[41] In the same paper the authors also coined the term “ion remains a vociferous champion for human interplanetary travel.
rocket” and seemed unaware of the recent appearance of that term [54] With the possible exception of the USSR’s Gas Dynamics
in Radd’s paper.30 Laboratory.
[42] It presented the first, albeit general, published scenarios for
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