New Horizons Blasts Off for Pluto [science news item]

[harmonica]

Cool

 

[chesty]

Magnetic Field unstable due to the extreme heat of the exiting plasma?

No, we actually cool the plasm down to something like 40 or so ev or is it Mev. I can't remember off the top of my head. We inject cool deuterium into the plasma. If we didn't we wouldn't have enough mass density for effective momentum. We would have high velocities at the exhaust but there would not be enough density for any real thrust.

I think it has something to do with the magnetic field interactions with the electron and its drift. That is about as far as I have gotten on the subject. My next course is in magnetic fields and plasma physics. Yeah!

 

[samoth]

My next course is in magnetic fields and plasma physics. Yeah!

Do you know what text you will be using?

Just curious...