Mass Driver 1
Early electromagnetic launcher built by MIT students in 1976–1977.
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Mass Driver 1 was a working model of an electromagnetic launcher built at MIT in 1976 and 1977. It demonstrated a concept that could someday use asteroidal material as reaction mass, powered by solar or other electricity, to act as a rocket motor. The device used about twenty drive coils. A small armature, called the bucket, moved through them, pushed by pulsed magnetic fields.
The bucket was an epoxy glass cylinder about 10 cm wide and 20 cm long, wrapped in aluminum wire and powered by car batteries. It rode on four copper rails, and spring-loaded beryllium copper strips with carbon brushes held it in place.
Microswitches triggered capacitors to fire the drive coils. When the bucket coil was cooled with liquid nitrogen, it reached an acceleration of about 30 g. Gerard K. O'Neill and Henry Kolm designed the project, and MIT students built it mostly from scrap.
A demonstration at a 1977 Princeton conference was featured on Nova. The long-term goal was to launch payloads from Earth at the cost of electric energy alone.
Quick Facts
- Construction years
- 1976 and 1977
- Designers
- Gerard K. O'Neill and Henry Kolm
- Builder
- Students at MIT
- Number of drive coils
- 20
- Maximum acceleration
- 30 g (300 m/s²)
- Demonstration event
- May 1977 Princeton University Space Manufacturing Facilities Conference
Facts from the source article.
More in Space Launch Vehicles of the United States
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Mass Driver 1 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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