Electromagnetic propulsion alternatives

Abstract

Mass drivers can serve to propel massive objects by expelling any available material as reaction mass, however, mass driver engines have several limitations such as relatively large payload size and dynamic stability problems. A number of alternative acceleration mechanisms exist which offer advantages for certain applications, such as higher acceleration at a sacrifice in efficiency, smaller possible size and decreased complexity at a sacrifice in service life, etc. The alternative concepts include several variants of the railgun, a family of superconducting slingshot oscillators, a momentum transformer, an impulse induction motor, and a family of hybrid synchronous accelerators. A potential application of considerable interest is the earth-based launching of space cargo or nuclear waste by using off-peak generating capacity to accelerate one ton cargo cylinders at intervals of several minutes.