Recent content by gustafangus

I'm not sure you understand, I am charging them with a DC power supply and trying to quickly discharge them on something. I know how to deal with high voltages, I have been doing this for a long time. My question was how to large capacitors with no energy loss on the switch. :)

Hello, I have a bit of a problem with my project and it is as follows: I am trying to discharge a capacitor bank (2x 470uf 400V capacitors in parallel). I tried making a MOSFET switch to use that as a switch, but it kept burning out the mosfets (they were rated for 600V and around 100A), then I...

Well yes, they use DC because usually MPD thrusters use a single power supply. One that has enough current to create a powerful magnetic field and at the same time have enough voltage to create the ark between the cathode and anode. What I would do is use a high voltage AC power supply to ionize...

Thank you for that! I know about myelectricengine, I've even tried contacting the man who wrote it by the mail he provided, but the mail doesn't exist anymore, LOL. Anyway, one thing I want to ask though, is when ionizing air/gas, must the current be DC or AC or does it even matter? High voltage...

One last question though, does the thruster have to be in a vacuum? I was re-reading your comments and you said something about a vacuum. And thank you for all your help.

Fair enough. As for looking up existing concepts, have you seen any? I tend to not ask a question in forums unless I can't find the answer beforehand, and trust me, I have searched for this. Do you know of any forum that deals with this type of stuff in more detail? Thank you for your help!

Thank you for all of your input, you gave a much clearer question than what I had before. I know how to work with high voltage (atleast to a point to not get myself killed). As for ionizing radiation, do you think that there would be a significant amount of ionizing radiation that could hurt me...

That's why I came up with the spark plug concept. Because having a high current and high voltage source is nearly impossible for an average Joe. Do you believe it would work with the spark plugs? Or can I connect a high voltage source to the cathodes and put some coils on the outside to run...

Thank you for your reply! But that would mean that I would not only require high current on the electrodes, but also high voltage to create the ark between them, correct? And should the the ark be momentous or continuous? Because when reading NASA's description, I had problems understanding...

Hello everybody, I was looking for ways to amplify magnetic fields for some project, but I happened to stuble upon articles about plasma thrusters. And seeing how a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster works, I thought: either this is really easy to make or I'm missing something. Now bare with me...