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RE: Can We Ever Have An All-Electric Powered Rocket?

in #stemng7 years ago

Be careful about the word power. Batteries do power rockets, but they don’t propel rockets. I think your question is about propulsion. You might be thinking about how we have electric cars and we have petroleum fueled cars on Earth and wondering why the same thing can’t happen in space.

Whenever discussing the motion of an object, we should throw some light on Newton's laws of motion.
The first law tells us that a spacecraft will continue along its path until forces act upon it instituting a change in the motion. This is the part that a lot of people are confused about when it comes to understanding that spacecraft are not constantly firing their engines. They only fire their engines when they need to make a change or have to counteract an external force.

The third law explains how a car moves down the road, on Earth. The rotating tires experience friction against the ground and push backwards against the ground. For that action, there is an equal and opposite reaction - the car moves forward. Electrical motors can make wheels rotate just as well as a chemical combustion engine can.

In space, there is no ground to grip. There is nothing to push against - wheels are useless, so how do we change the motion of our spacecraft.

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That's very true, the electric power some satellites in space; the title says it all, all-powered..