CHAPTER 437: CHAPTER 435: ION THRUSTER

The task of developing the new aircraft sparked great interest in Chen Xin.

For him, creating a new aircraft only depends on whether his imagination is rich enough, rather than other constraints.

However, Chen Xin cannot let his imagination run too wild, as he still needs to consider the practical issues of production. Even if Chen Xin could create the X-wing Starfighter from Star Wars, the country couldn’t even make a single Light Saber.

This is due to the gap in industrial systems and overall technology, which can’t be bridged simply by Chen Xin taking shortcuts.

Therefore, when designing the new fighter jet, Chen Xin must take into account the country’s industrial production capabilities. Whether the new fighter jet can be manufactured depends not only on design issues but also on factors such as cost and technology.

This means Chen Xin cannot use overly exaggerated technology; it is best to design and develop on the existing technological foundation.

For Chen Xin, designing the new aircraft to be advanced is an easy task, given the abundance of science fiction works that he could easily copy and accomplish with system assistance.

But making the new aircraft more realistic and less advanced... now that takes some thoughtful design.

Fortunately, Chen Xin is currently in the temporary Capital of Flame Country, where there are abundant research resources and related data, and Chen Xin also happens to have the authority to access this information.

Of course, Chen Xin cannot comprehend the specific research data, but he is capable of having a list and a summary of currently applicable technologies in the field of aircraft manufacturing in Flame Country organized, allowing him to find what he needs.

For an aircraft, the most crucial component is the engine, which is often referred to as the heart.

Flame Country had long been criticized for its fighter jets’ inadequacies, with the major issue being engine performance and the ability to develop and produce them. The lack of a self-developed, reliable engine was once a huge regret for Flame Country in the aerospace field.

After the relentless efforts of countless people, Flame Country finally achieved breakthroughs in this field, and the manufacturing and development of engines have finally borne significant fruit.

However, for the new aircraft, Chen Xin does not intend to use the existing aircraft engines.

The reason is self-explanatory; what Chen Xin favors is the ion propulsion system originally applied in the aerospace sector, also known as the ion thruster.

Simply put, it utilizes electrical energy to electrolyze propellant into charged particles, then accelerates these charged particles to gain thrust.

This is also a relatively common type of engine in science fiction works, usually applied to spacecraft, with no consideration of using it within the atmosphere.

This is mainly because of the ion thruster’s small thrust production, or rather, its large power requirement.

The ion thruster can accelerate charged particles to tens or hundreds of kilometers per second, or even higher. In such a scenario, to produce relatively large thrust, an ion thruster requires exceedingly significant power and the same extent of energy to drive it.

According to the mature technology on the Blue Star, if the power of an ion thruster is increased to 200KW, approximately 0.45 kilograms of thrust can be generated, which may seem insignificant in the atmosphere but is sufficient to propel a 2-ton object once it is elevated into space, free from gravitational influence.

Of course, this is limited by the original technical level of Blue Star.

With the current nuclear reactor technology possessed by Flame Country, a micro reactor with power exceeding 10MW capable of being mounted on aircraft can already supply sufficient energy to the engine.

And what Chen Xin needs to do is to reduce the velocity of the ion thruster’s exhaust, thereby increasing its thrust.

This is the same principle as reducing the exhaust velocity in jet engines to increase engine thrust.

Kinetic energy Ek= mv^2/2, momentum=mv, thrust is determined by momentum.

For aviation engines, the exhaust loss is wasted energy.

When momentum mv remains constant, reducing the exhaust speed can decrease the energy carried away by the exhaust, thereby improving efficiency.

Similarly, maintaining the same momentum while lowering the exhaust velocity requires greater mass of propellant, i.e., ingesting more air.

In simple terms, an aviation engine needs to push a large amount of air at low speed to be efficient.

However, for ion thrusters, although the principle aligns, their demand for air, or propellant, is far below that of regular aviation engines.

Currently, ion thrusters consume propellant at a rate of milligrams per second, producing thrust at the level of 0.1 Newtons. If this figure is scaled to meet the thrust requirements of jet fighters, the consumption of propellant remains negligible.

For example, the independently developed Taihang engine by Flame Country has a thrust of 13.5 tons, which converts to 132,300 Newtons, corresponding to approximately 0.13 kilograms of propellant consumption per second.

This propellant consumption is not substantial at all, and taking the Taihang engine as an example again, its airflow intake is 118kg/sec, roughly a thousand times more than that of an ion thruster.

Therefore, under the premise of using air as the propellant, the air intake requirement of ion engines is considerably insignificant, even comparable to ordinary family cars.

As for the issue of limiting the use of ion thrusters within the atmosphere due to power concerns, this is no longer a problem with the ample power provided by small nuclear reactors.

Once the engine problem is resolved, the issues remaining for an aircraft are merely aerodynamic layout, structural design, and some other minor details, and these can all be solved with forceful approaches.

As long as there is sufficient power, even the most terrible aerodynamic layout and structural design can take flight, as long as it doesn’t fall apart.

Of course, Chen Xin has not lost his mind to such an extent as to plan something so forceful. He still intends to design the aircraft’s appearance carefully.

However, as a non-specialist, his focus was more on the attractiveness of the appearance than its rationality.

Although, according to a certain law of causality master, the better the appearance, the more advanced the technology is implied. But for ordinary aircraft designers, the design must eventually accommodate technology.

But for Chen Xin... With the system at hand, he could even build a Gundam that can fly supersonically, so he could lean more toward appearance rather than technology in his aircraft design.

After some brainstorming and referencing existing sci-fi works, the final design Chen Xin came up with looks more like a space fighter than a fighter jet meant for atmospheric use. It’s angular and stylish but not at all smooth.

The most crucial aspect was the installation of three thrusters on the aircraft, two of which are mounted on the wings, a layout completely different from the current fighter jet designs.