Water-Powered Engines Offer Satellite Mobility

摘要

NASA has been planning for a water-powered rocket engine since the Agency's early years. The water-electrolysis rocket offers advantages such as high performance, safe materials, simple storage, long lifetime, and low power requirements. During decades of experimentation, though, no one actually produced a practical water-electrolysis engine. Until now."Managing hydrogen and oxygen and superheated steam, there are a lot of materials issues like corrosion," said Robert Hoyt, co-founder and CEO of Tethers Unlimited Inc. (TUI) in Bothell, WA. With this in mind and with NASA's help, TUI built the first viable water-electrolysis engines. Currently, NASA's interest in the technology stems from its effort to advance the state of technology for CubeSats - tiny, low-cost satellites built with off-the-shelf parts.