Satellites That Scoop Air And Use It As Propellant

Satellites run out of fuel and have to de-orbit and end their missions. But what if they had access to a practically infinite amount of fuel? What if they could scoop air from the atmosphere and use it as propellant? That is exactly the research that Dr Mansur Tisaev is doing!

🟣 Guest: Dr. Mansur Tisaev

👉 Dr Andrea Lucca Fabris

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00:00 Intro
02:04 Ion engines
15:32 Effects of the solar activity
19:35 Advantages of air-breathing engines
28:13 What's next
32:05 Non-Earth applications
36:26 Interstellar applications
38:35 Current obsessions
41:03 Final thoughts

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[davesatxify]

this young mans joy in his work just explodes off the screen

[faolitaruna]

The content of the channel this month is the greatest it has ever been.

[Lamprolign]

"Every idea is science fiction at some point." the dreamer really likes that quote.

[SirajFlorida]

Fraser, I just appreciate what you do so much. Thank you for interviewing the most interesting people in the world so often. You're amazing man.

[judycarlsen]

Extremely informative. Please stay connected with Dr Tisaev for future interviews. He is an extremely interesting person with the ability to communicate ideas very well. I would listen to any interview with him in the future.

[Maccer]

Absolutely fascinating. Wonderfully informing interview, with a very polite, very intelligent individual.
The future of space science has never looked so good 👍

[Jedward]

I love the doctor's enthusiasm and frasers excellent interviewing.

[JW-mbtq]

Absolutely fascinating! Dr. Tisaev does a wonderful job making this topic understandable.

[JulianMakes]

What an interesting interview. It was really detailed and fascinating. Thank you.

[CELEESST]

Lately there is an overload on innovations, which is amazing, it seems they opened a can with innovations, not only in space, also in my job area. Exciting times. I'm happy to see these developments in my lifetime. Thanks, Mr. Cain for showing us these, how do you shift them for your videos? It's a huge job. Much appreciated.

[alansnyder]

Fraser asks the perfect question about the atmosphere changing due to solar activity. I wish this part of the interview had gone longer. I would like to ask how fast (giving past examples) can atmosphere change, and could it be so much that the satellite could not get higher fast enough.

[t.a.r.s]

02:00. In a way, this idea reminds me another type of theorical engine at a very different scale imagined decades ago: the Bussard Engine.
This one harvests (or breathe, to reuse your metaphor) with giants magnetic fiels the hydrogene in the interstellar medium to feed its fusion reactor. That's s science fiction for now, because it would require a giant magnetic field in front of the ship, extended on thousand kilometers if I remeber well, because the hydrogene is in very very small quantity in the void of space.

[Starman_]

He was good. Well worth the time to watch.
🤘😎🤘

[orbitONhigh]

The real challenge with this is getting the lifetime up, ionized nitrogen and oxygen are very reactive with basically everything it even eats teflon ( a favored electrical insulation for spacecraft wiring) not to mention cathode materials like barium. having an unlimited propellant supply doesn't help much if your thruster eats itself after few hundred hours and destroys half the wiring. Everyone hates on xenon but besides cost it really is the best ion propellant from performance and lifetime perspective.

[ultramarinus]

Great idea. Interested, if you can use that for those aplications:

1) Fleet of smaller "refuelers", wich would scoop the materiel, and than return to its "mothership" to fuel it. That might help with the cost of interplanetary travel (most of the cost would be the "refuel starts" from the surface).


and/or

2) "Orbital space-tug" - big powered unmanned "satelite", wich would save fuel for bigger starships by accelerating them (or for incoming space-mined materiell, or even starships - deccelerating them) on specific vector and speed.

eventually

3) "Orbital sweeper" for clearing the orbital debrie from around the Earths orbit.

[williamstucke]

Well done to Fraser for bringing up the concept of a Bussard Ramjet

[RaidPanda]

I just listened to this interview on the soon to be offline Google Podcasts platform. And I come here just to comment that I love the humility and the honesty of your guest.

It's so refreshing these days to have someone let you know that they are smart enough to know that some people may know more than they do, and humble enough to say explicitly that they don't know something.

Everyone of your guests is a very smart, knowledgeable, and interesting person. But there is something in the way this one speaks that feels so fresh in this world of so called "strong men" who think every opinion they have is just Common Sense™️

[Hoganply]

This is perhaps the best channel I wish I'd subscribed to over a decade ago.

[adamsebastian]

Fascinating. Looking foreword to see how this research progresses.

This could be a game changer if we could find a way to sustain satellites at these lower orbits that allow for an ongoing primary fuel source while also providing decreased latency (and stronger signal?) along with natural quick space junk cleanup and thus greatly mitigating if not eliminating the consequences of accidental collisions.

[samedwards]

Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up.