Analysis of Air Breathing Hall-Effect Thruster (Preprint)

摘要

The principle idea of using air breathing electrical propulsion for a vehicle flying at orbital speed on the edge of Earth's atmosphere is examined. In this paper, we present a simple model of a Hall Effect thruster in which the propellant is an ambient air. The required lengths of the thruster chamber, the magnetic fields, the thrust, and other parameters of an ideal air breathing Hall Effect thruster are calculated as a function of the flying altitude of the vehicle. We demonstrated that an air breathing Hall thruster is indeed capable of providing the needed thrust for near space satellites in the case of the altitudes of about 80-90 km.