Electric Speedster Just Announced By Vintage Motorcars of California

@DannyP
I just remembered a use for steam in space but it’s a little “out there” -

If you ever watched that terrific Sci-Fi show on Amazon Video called “The Expanse”, it was explained every now and then that, after a lot of close-action space battles with space bad guys and when the gunship “Rosinante” (the star of the show) had been doing a lot of maneuvering, they would be running low on water to power the thrusters.  Their thrusters ran on steam.  Run water through a flash heater and it spurts through an orifice under pressure to provide inertial thrust.  Remember, it just needs to be strong enough to move the mass of the space ship/module, not against gravity, and water can be easily heated and replaced (especially on a Sci-Fi show).

NASA does something similar but sometimes used liquids that boil as they are being released, like hydrogen peroxide shot through a tungsten screen to make it boil to provide inertial thrust.  Smaller craft with very little mass (like small geostationary satellites) can use ion engines as thrusters to move around and/or hold position.  Then all they need are big honkin solar arrays for power to the ion thrusters (or a compact nuclear power supply like on the Voyager probes).  

“Steam Space, the final frontier…….”

Just for those interested in where battery tech is going soon, an article from the journal Nano Research this week describes a manufacturing process for solid state batteries delivering over twice the energy storage of lithium-ion (as well as the other safety, charging speed, weight, etc advantages of solid state batteries).

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-...-state-batteries.amp

I wonder if they will be any more "climate friendly" when disposed of.

@Panhandle Bob posted:

I wonder if they will be any more "climate friendly" when disposed of.

I don't know, I haven't seen much (or it hasn't sunk in) on the issues. I don't think a dominant battery chemistry has emerged yet on the solid state approach. We can hope...

Bob, you piqued my interest in recycling of solid state batteries. I found an article in Matter (journal) that is amazingly well done in covering the current state of recycling Li-ion batteries (bad), reviewing the 3 dominant chemistries vying for dominance in solid state cells.

Use this shortened link:

https://tinyurl.com/32v6sjfn

The article reviews the many, many different ways to recycle and describing the pros and cons of each, even down to different components and cost differentials.

It's VERY long and sometimes I was scratching my head and trying to remember high school chemistry. The authors do summary recommendations for recycling process and suggest policies needed to encourage recycling.

They give the example of the heavily regulated lead-acid batteries which are recycled at a 99% rate compared to Li-ion (including consumer products batteries) which are recycled at a 5% rate currently. Their idea is to get ahead of the solid state recycling issue before they emerge into widespread use.

My post may be TLDR but the article is even more so. I did come out of it with a much better understanding of battery chemistries and how the recycling might go. Go there if you dare...

Sintering is neat.

Powdered metal connecting rods are supposed to be as strong as or stronger than forged. Def cheaper and easier to make.

Powdered metal(?) cathodes could turn out to be something too.

I just finished an article in the PCA Panorama magazine about a pre-teen girl building an electric 914.  She is learning needed skills, like welding, along the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6yrhdkqPGs