Astronomy
A little thrust for a long time
Inspect an electric engine and its ion plume. Trade exhaust speed against thrust, accumulate velocity over a long burn and test the neutralizer interlock.
The model and its limits
Singly ionised Xe / Kr / Ar, fixed conversion efficiency and power-limited thrust with variable propellant mass. Time runs 600 times faster. Without the neutralizer the spacecraft charges up within seconds and the thrust dies away with (1 − charge); plasma self-fields are not solved.
Equations used in the module
Equations v_e = sqrt(2 q V/m_Xe); F = 2 eta P/v_e; dm/dt = -F/v_e; delta_v = v_e ln(m0/m)
