Experimenting with a Magnetohydrodynamic Drive demo
Posted By RichC on April 13, 2021
You can take the boy out of school, but you can’t take school (and learning) out of the 
boy ( or older man at this point).
Over the weekend, I was talking to Brenda about how I’ve been following the NASA feed (tweet below) and waiting for the helicopter to take flight on Mars. The conversation lead to talking about engineering and when I was learning about Lorentz force (F = qE + qv x B) and electromagnetic fields. My semi-lecture, and her questioning my decades ago education, lead me to theorizing that we would eventually use this principle in a space engine or something referred to as a plasma propulsion engine.
Brenda remained a skeptic, so I headed down to the workshop on Sunday afternoon to create a prototype in order to demonstrate the "no moving parts" electromagnetic principle – it’s a fun science project: a Magnetohydrodynamic Drive. Anyway, she was moderately impressed and said, “you should have waited and worked on that with Annalyn and Ellerie” (maybe I will someday as it is a great idea if they ever need a Science Fair project?)
#MarsHelicopter 1st flight attempt delayed to no earlier than April 14
During the high-speed spin test, the sequence ended early during the transition from "preflight" to "flight" mode. The helicopter is safe & healthy. The team is diagnosing the issue. https://t.co/ysnZzKR7qM pic.twitter.com/lP3NrIvGBs
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 10, 2021
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