S01E03 - Spaceforward S01E03 The physics of space travel - Engineering vs Breakthrough Physics?
In this episode, we’ll take you on a deep dive into the physics of space travel. Are we merely grappling with a challenging engineering problem or will new breakthroughs, an entirely new physics be required in order to utilize space to its fullest potential?
We will discuss this question with our guest, Professor Martin Tajmar, renowned Austrian Physicist, Professor and Chair of Space Systems at the Technical University of Dresden, and hurray, a Fellow International Space University Alumnus, a member of the family. Martin has worked at NASA, ESA, in South Korea, and the Austrian Institute of Technology, performing research on electric and miniaturized propulsion and on breakthrough propulsion physics. Professor Tajmar is the author of the book: “Advanced Space Propulsion Systems” and has received critical acclaim from the scientific community for his research on Electric Propulsion.
Space Forward: Mark, one of the things that I'm hoping that we could dive into today and that the idea here for this episode is getting to the depth and the concept of physics of space travel. You're a physicist, your master's and your Ph.D. theses - both were on electrical space propulsion. What brought you into physics? Can you recall a particular time or moment that represented a turning point? Was it like, I'm going into space and research electrical propulsion for the rest of my life and become a physicist?
Martin Tajmar: Well, that's a fairly easy question, because if you asked me as a five year old, what I would like to become, my answer was I would like to become a physicist. People ask me if I know how to spell this, actually. And it was very clear from the beginning that physics that's that's what it's going to be. And when I watched Star Trek on television, I knew that someone has to build the warp drive. that's got to be me. And yeah, physics and space and this combination that was very, very attractive for me. I began this really very, very early on. And this was a big advantage for me that I had this clear path in front of me. I knew exactly what to do. What I'm doing now at university is the same thing that I did as a child in my children room, in my laboratory. Just I'm not doing this sort of well, many, many orders of magnitude better, but I'm doing the same kind of experiments that I was doing as a child. I'm very, very fortunate, very lucky. And I always knew that that that it's going to be that.
Space Forward: This poses a very interesting question - I've been always curious because I've listened to a few interviews that you've given - What gave you the inspiration and the motivation to entice you to do the research that you're doing right now? It's space propulsion, what you're calling breakthrough physics and breakthrough research and breakthrough propulsion. What has led you to that?
Martin Tajmar: Well, I kind of figured out that the most important thing on your spacecraft is propulsion, right? if you look at Star Trek, I mean, it's great to beam some people, , to the surface and back. But I could do this alwith a shuttle. It would be nice to have, , a food processor or whatever. But but I could albring in some frozen food with me on a trip or so. But I cannot trade in the warp drive. I need propulsion to do the really fun part. that's the number one item. And space propulsion you I, I really have to dig deep into space propulsion. And yeah, when I, when I learned about the basics in propulsion and what, what you could do with it, and I realized pretty quickly that whatever we do, the best technology that's surround can just bring it to the edge of our solar system. And well that's not very far because of course I would like to explore other worlds, , maybe maybe find, , other people somewhere. And you need to get to the next stars somehow. that's that's the biggest problem to solve. And it's really the biggest problem to solve because no one did it. There is no no path that you can follow that would be successful in the end. it's it's one of the biggest mysteries and one of the biggest puzzles to solve. And I thought that that's great because you have to take on a very, very challenging problem. If you want to teach something, maybe you don't achieve that. But along your way, you must be very innovative and you get many other things that you maybe didn't think about. you need something very challenging to achieve something big, no matter if you achieve this goal or not. I chose that path.
Space Forward: Well, it's very admirable, especially to our audience that you're taking this path of trying to figure out and trying to go to to create the next revolution in this spectrum. One of the key things that really got me was, you are an International Space University (ISU) student and you went there. What we're hoping to to learn from?
You were not only a student, but you were a lecturer. Are you still a faculty there? How was your experience as a student and becoming becoming part of the space mafia as far as people like to call it now?
Martin Tajmar: Well, I can tell you that that when I was at ISU, this was my best time as a student, this was this was the best time. And not only that, , the people interacting and all these things around around ISU, but what I particularly enjoyed was that every day I learn something, something else from space. One day it could be space law. The next day, , they bring in the president from the Japanese space agency and I'm exposed to something completely different. And the next day, the shuttle launch director from Cape Canaveral. It was fascinating to see all the different aspects of space and to talk to key people in that area and to build up your network. That was fantastic. So, yeah.
Space Forward: It was a good stepping stone for you and guided yourself into the space trajectory that you are in now. Coming back to that speculative space trajectory that you're leading on now that you're moving forward on now - one of the things that we're hoping to do on this episode with you is deconstruct the big ideas around to first principles, to get our audience to actually understand what does it mean when you think about physics and what do you think about space travel? What would you say are the basic fundamental concepts in physics relevant to space propulsion?
Martin Tajmar: Ok, the basic principle is to actio/reactio. That means I have to create some momentum and get a back-reaction. That's the core principle on which our propulsion systems work, which means I need to have propellant and or energy to achieve propulsion. And there are some severe limits to that. If I have to bring my propellant with me, then end up pretty well, pretty fast. I end up in a certain limit that if I want to achieve, let's say I want to achieve a certain end velocity with my spacecraft. I have to use all my propellant. these propellant, must be very energetic. It has to eject at a very high velocity in order to to achieve my, let's say, end velocity. And if I want to go a little bit further than that, then I do not have to just bring a little bit more propellant with me, but I have to bring much more propellant with me because for this little add on, I have to bring all this additional propellant. In addition, I have to move it to to my original velocity and then I can do the add on. I always have to add a huge chunk of propellant initially to do that a little add on at the end. this is called the Tsiolkovsky equation.
This is the basic equation in space propulsion. And yet that means with the options that we have. With deficiencies with the energies that we have in propulsion available right now and with the amount of propellant that we're used to to carry with us. The basic limits that we have is then basically, yeah, the edge of our solar system. And that already involves, very fancy propulsion systems like nuclear propulsion. If we go through some of the options, right, you have chemical propulsion. That's the workhorse of present-day propulsion. Well, you take, for example, hydrogen and oxygen. This is a very, very energetic combination. You would like to arrive at an end product that is a gas. That limits you in some in some possibilities. And you would like to have something that is probably, well, which is green and not toxic and so on. Actually, that means that hydrogen oxygen is the best choice. You can maybe replace hydrogen, that's with methane or what SpaceX is doing, which is fairly similar. And it has the advantage that methane has a higher density than if it would just take hydrogen gas around. I get some improvements there. If you take the best propellant options, it doesn't even bring it to orbit, you have to do this in at least two stages. You cut your rocket. Well, SpaceX, fortunately, they can reuse this first stage which now it's coming back. It's been reused. But but this whole huge tank and everything that they carry with you, this is just dead weight that you don't use it anymore. You have to cut your spacecraft in at least two pieces. And let's say if you would cut your spacecraft or your rocket into an infinite number of pieces, that just would give you a factor of two in your improvement. Yeah, you cut your rocket in half, this brings about effective one point four and that is enough to bring you just into orbit. If you slice in a million pieces, you get a factor of two, which is a limit. And chemical propulsion - the idea is now you go into space and then well you have to launch many refuelling missions to inject your rocket in space now with more propellant and then you can go off to Mars - you can maybe go off to Jupiter. This takes a couple of months. That's possible. It's expensive and it consumes a lot of propellant.
Space Forward: Yeah, one of the things that you brought up and is a really good point and I think our listeners would want to know: you mentioned the division of rockets in multiple stages and increasing by a factor of two. This leads into my next question. What is a factor of two and what are some of the key metrics other than the factor or other than the division of multi stages that current space propulsion or traditional space propulsion can use to optimize its capacity?
Martin Tajmar: Yep, basically, this is the very basic rocket equation. Tsiolkovsky equation doesn't give you many options to work on your improvement stuff. There is this mass ratio that you can play with and there's a so-called specific impulse. This is the energy in your propellant. It's the propellant utilization efficiency. It's basically the speed that the propellant has when it exits your your propulsion system. That's why I said if you can pick up a portion of a sudden energy and energy density, hydrogen oxygen is the best. If you don't go toxic, you can say, well, I don't care about going toxic or not. I'm launching, say, in the middle of the ocean. Maybe there's a Greenpeace ship coming or whatever. But if I launch quickly, I can get off and you can replace oxygen with fluorine, for example. Yeah. then you get a nice taste coming up on the back of your propulsion system. That gives you some some little improvement factor here. But of course, this is not very nice because your launcher, your launch tower and whatever will be destroyed by this accident. That's not not good. There are a couple of, let's say, propellant options, some exotic propellant options that people are thinking of. For example, something like metallic hydrogen or something which is stored in a very cold state under enormous pressure and whatever. Maybe in the future then you can think about something like this.
Martin Tajmar: But very naturally, the next big step is not to use chemical explosives. We all know there is much bad explosion around and that's a nuclear option. Doesn't matter if you go nuclear fission or if you go nuclear fusion, then your energy density goes up by something like eight orders of magnitude. This is not a factor of two, forget this, you just go, many orders of magnitude above. And this is technology that is around since the 1960s. It's just a political thing. If you have a requirement to use this kind of option, then your governments can take the card and just implement it. That has been done. You can do with nuclear propulsion, you could in principle, you can launch with a spacecraft from the Earth flying into space like an airplane, come back without cutting your rocket into pieces. And you could go on a manned mission to Mars in one, two months and in half a year, you can go manned to Jupiter. That's a really nice option. And I always compare, in the old days, let's say 200 years ago, people were coming for horse carriage ride. Let's say from Germany to Italy and back, it took them two months or three months. That's the time with nuclear power, you could go to Mars. It is a good option. Right? It's like in the in the old times.
Space Forward: But why does nuclear propulsion been an option since the 60s, as is, it's becoming more and more prevalent now?
Martin Tajmar: Well, I'm very sure that in at least 10 years or so, this nuclear propulsion option will be will be available because the Chinese are going to do it, for sure. And if they are doing it, the US and Russia will have it already in their pockets, just waiting to release this kind of technology. Of course, everything that deals with nuclear, you have to convince the public. Of course, the plan always was, for example, to use this only when you're already in space. You launch this and you activate it when you're in space. If you don't activate the reactor before and the rocket explodes, you would not even measure any kind of increased radioactivity. That's, for example, is one option to do so. Again, this technology is around since decades and it just waits to be used.
Space Forward: It seems like it's been a very steady case of keeping the technology development slow but steady and waiting for the right time for it to come. But one of the key things that we're trying to figure out through this episode and with you are the factors that space propulsion would hopefully be overcoming. The limiting elements. In literature it's defined as gravity inertia that come in that domain of limiting elements. How would you put that? Are these the only elements that are limiting us to improve?
Martin Tajmar: As I said, there is no method that we know of that that works for sure. I can give a couple of ideas how you would hypothetically do it. And and we can go for that.
Space Forward: Absolutely.That’s were everything starts, right?
Martin Tajmar: Absolutely, ok. If you discover minus one kilogram we are done. It's very easy. We can go to the stars. Why is that so? So, the key thing here is mass. And especially, let's say inertial mass, because initial mass, it's linked to the force, to everything mechanical that we do. And if we have a rocket flying, that's auto mechanics. It's all it all relies on. And let's say good old Newton's mechanics force is mass inertial mass times acceleration. And if you want to change this, somehow, you have to work on the mass on the inertial mass. Yeah. And just two examples of how this could work. Option one, you may be achieve to change your inertial mass by a little bit. Very small amount. For example, let's just expose a little bit E=mc2, everyone else energies mass times the speed of light to the square. Which means let's say I have a capacitor and charge just the capacitor, then this capacitor will increase in its mass because I increase the energy. By the way, in this example, the power supply must be external. It's not going to be in the spacecraft because then it would just shift energy from one side to the other side.
In our example, I charge up a capacity from the outside and it increases its mass. When it discharged, again, going to the outside then of my spacecraft, then the mass will decrease. If I find a method somehow to exchange this with my environment, a little bit of mass goes to the outside and then when I need it again, I will bring it back. That would be something, because the mass is a little bit bigger and I push it and then I wait until the mass is a little bit lighter again. And then I do it again. That means, I could move in space time with that without expanding propellant by giving something to the environment and taking it back. That's for example, is method number one.
A really cool method is method number two. In method number two, I say that, hey, let's say I achieve the goal even by be negative in mass. I'm not changing math a little bit. I'm going negative. If I do that, then if I have positive and negative mass next to each other, negative mass is actually something totally magic.
It's a magic trick. If you have normal mass on your table and you push it, this mass is going to accelerate in the same direction as I push it. F=m.a. Now to the magic trick. That stuff becomes negative, which means I try to push it and it's actually coming to me. OK, it's totally weird. And you can say, hey, has this ever been observed in a lab? Good news is, Yes, it has. Our technology becomes better and better. And we can actually create our own little universe in our laboratories. And you can actually bring matter into the state of that, it behaves like if it would have negative inertia there. There are some some grade papers out there.
One of the most famous physicists in Austria is Professor Zeilinger. The head of the Academy of Science is very well-known, a professor. And in the 1990s, he did lots of experiments with neutrons, actually. And nowadays he's very well known for quantum teleportation, doing lots of stuff with photons. In the early days, he was actually doing lots of things with neutrons. And for example, he investigated F=m.a., if you would have negative mass, does Newton's laws still hold? Because this magic trick that I told you, I push on something negative message comes to me.
Who knows if this is true for Newton's law? Newton wasn't aware of this. Maybe he thought, maybe it's the absolute value of mass times acceleration that's force. He didn't write it down because there is no negative mass. Let's say let's try to investigate does such a case exist. And well, what he showed was that if you have a neutron beam and this neutron beam actually at a right angle, gives the right energies and whatever goes inside a crystal, then this neutron beam splits. One beam behaves as to have positive effective mass another one behaves as if it would have negative, a negative, effective mass, and then he looked at the following: these neutron beam is split and was going in the same direction. And now gravity is acting on both. Right. Gravity pulls down the positive neutrons and they fall down and gravity pulls on the negative mass neutrons and actually to go up. You see that this neutron beam is actually splitting - both are being pulled. But for the negative mass neutrons, they're flying upward. There is a great paper out there from Professor Zeilinger. The title is something like, neutrons that fly upwards in a gravitational field. That's, I would give him the Nobel Prize for that.
Space Forward: And would I if I was part of that, a part of that team.
Martin Tajmar: Yeah.
Space Forward: But, one of the key things that I'm starting to understand, that a lot of these fundamentals that have evolved into conceptuals, that have evolved into broader ideas and segmented into multiple different approaches.
It is a challenge that each one of those we are facing today to bring it out becoming a prominent stand alone against what we already have. We know chemical propulsion works because we have done it for thousands of years, and we're trying to still improve. It seems like we're still trying to improve a lot of the factors that involve chemical propulsion. And this has evolved, originally from the Tsiolkovsky equation, to a much harder problem.
In order for us as a human species and as people who are continuously solving challenges to get to the Earth's orbit and to get there faster, but not just that, but to get to Interstellar, what is the hardest problem that you think that we have to solve in this realm?
Martin Tajmar: These are two different things, to get into orbit that's just time and money, Spacex solving that for us, that's great. This is actually something that may be appears, an opportunity appears once in a century, that the richest men in the world decide to put his money on solving space travel. That's fantastic. It's just time and money and some good engineering. The way how to do it, to improve the rocket engines, I mean, we have right now a combustion efficiency of something like 99 percent, well, there's room for improvement, The gain is going to be really small. Yes, I think chemical propulsion - it's there. They, of course, are trying now to improve their thrust over weight ratio. They're trying to make it more lightweight. They increase the pressure they have more thrust and whatever. But from the energy that are put in to, the energy just coming out, there's not much more to be improved. You can just become cheaper. You can bring a little bit more mass into orbit if your whole rocket becomes lighter, these kind of things. But if once this is going into a kind of mass manufacturing, if they really make something like a thousand starships, what they what they plan to do, then that solved - it's you can hardly to do better than that.
The Chinese are doing it right now. Let's say in Europe I'm not sure or convinced if this is to be followed.
But, yeah, I mean, then, you have probably Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. He will we get into there. Great competition is always good. But the access to space, I mean, just look how the numbers were falling down when I was going to ISU. So, we were counting with twenty to twenty five thousand dollars per kilogram to put into orbit. Now with Falcon heavy, if you're lucky, you pay two thousand dollars per kilogram. And if they do this with Starship well, it's one hundred dollars per kilogram. This this is like what I pay with UPS if I want to have a package, going from Germany to the U.K. And then I put some insurance on top of it. Same price. So, that has been solved for a couple of years. Access to space is affordable enough to just take it for granted. This is just a way of transportation that everyone is free to use.
Space Forward: You brought up an excellent point, and I want to poke on that a little bit. Would you agree that then on the basis of where we are with Space X, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, find ways of manufacturing in the launch industry to improve from Earth to orbit? It has become an engineering problem.
Martin Tajmar: For sure, there is no physics - the factor that stops you from doing so.
Space Forward: And Elon - I want to talk about that a little bit, because it seems like he's become a very good prominent figure, not only in the space industry, but also, he revolutionized the automotive industry with Tesla, and he's betting on making the space industry a primary. Is he going in the right direction? The concept that he bet today to make the industry better, would that be appropriate? Or would you bet on Elon to make this space Launch industry better?
Martin Tajmar: Definitely. I'm a huge fan. So, I was fearing actually before Elon actually came at the stage. My fear was that until I retire, I'm not going to see any human mission to Mars. This has always been postponed. There was huge international effort and maybe in the mid 2030s, maybe mid 2040s. Who knows, that is really a top priority or not. Maybe we stick with robotic probes. It really needs someone to decide: oh, well, we're going to do this. And this person should not limited to political terms. Not that in four years we're changing because something else came up. Elon Musk apparently is an excellent scientist and engineer. He understands exactly what needs to be done and he can manage a big team. Plus he has the resources necessary to do so. That's what I said. This is the chance of a century. Yeah. it's like Tesla and Edison invented and revolutionized how we deal with electricity. Elon Musk is revolutionizing transportation. Yeah, like Henry Ford revolutionized how to build an automobile. Now it's the next revolution.
Space Forward: Yeah, and you brought up a really good point there I'm hoping to expand on this a little bit here for our listeners. A lot of great names have done a lot of good things because they were able to do it by themselves or with a great team or able to manage a great team. But with Elon - it's very, very interesting that he did something on the basis of other principles and he was able to improve on that by creating multiple roads of efficiency. But do you think that he'll be able to figure out a way to do the next big thing after the rocket? And what do you think that next big thing after the rocket could be?
Martin Tajmar: I think he will be very, very happy if gets a starship really up and running and for him, the next big thing is to build a city on Mars. That's that's a huge challenge. It's not like: oh, well, we can now go to Mars, that's great. There are many things that need to be done. We have to produce propellant there on site. This city must be self-sustaining. You have to produce food. You have to do this well. You have to cope with radiation damages and whatever for people. Then there are many things that need to be done, especially on the engineering side, to have a self-sustaining city on Mars. Transportation is the first step, but there are many steps to follow. I guess he will go towards that technology is necessary to have something completely self-sustaining. And actually, you can use that type of technologies then to build a generation starship,
Space Forward: That brings up a really good point, because I'm very curious to learn and hear about what your thoughts are on the next version of Starship and what kind of innovations will they involve and what kind of new principles evolved from fundamentals that will evolve.
And brings up a good point, which you are really interested in. I've read some things about this idea of breakthrough physics, which goes beyond the Earth's orbit. And for us to be able to travel as a species to other planetary bodies. What are your thoughts there? What would be best for us to do from Earth orbit to the moon to Mars and to further on, interstellar?
Martin Tajmar: Ok, those are the two things we can move Starship. We can go to the moon in three days and if the ticket is the price of a business class ticket from Europe to the US, that's fine with me. You don't need breakthrough propulsion. That's great. Moon, Mars and maybe again half a year to Jupiter. We will do that, fortunately with Elon Musk and SpaceX and whatever. We will do. This is just a matter of time. In the next decade, we will have this Mars thing going. Maybe we will start and already maybe exploring towards Jupiter because the moon's there are very interesting. There could be living there. It must not only be Mars. And terraforming. Whatever you do that is maybe the next thing here.
Well to go interstellar - this is again something else. And maybe let me give you an example of what kind of a challenge that is and some standard solutions and the non-standard solutions. Let's imagine you would like to go interstellar with a spacecraft the size of the space shuttle. Because this is, actually the space shuttle is actually quite big. It seems small, but it's actually quite big and let's say you want to take the space shuttle and just go to the next star Proxima Centauri. We know there is maybe an interesting planet. They recently found a signal that may come from there. We can check out who is behind that, that signal.
Breakthrough Listen did that. And I just want to go there, let's say, in 40 years, because 40 years, the time span, I could still be alive if you could see what's going on. And the space shuttle is big enough that I can take some canned food with me for 40 years plus some spare oxygen to still be alive and a couple of books and whatever to make that trip. All right. Space shuttle would work for such a 40 year-long trip? The thing is, what kind of propulsion system could bring it there? Well, let's take the best propulsion system that is around that I can take off the shelf. And the best propulsion system there is is a nuclear bomb. OK, this is the best. This E=mc2, you cannot do better than that. Direct conversion of a mass into energy is the best. And I'll just take a bomb and put it back on a spacecraft. I will push the button. It ignites. Huge explosion of much better than everything that would move chemical propulsion. And off I go. OK, I can design my spacecraft in such a way that this push and absorber plate is good enough that if withstands a couple of thousand nuclear blasts. That can bring me to a really significant type of speed. That's the best thing you can imagine. That has been done. Yeah. I mean, the concept was developed, called Project Orion, in the 1950s and 60s. When I saw that the Saturn 5 rocket was doing fine, well, this project was stopped. This is actually a mass product that you can take from this intercontinental missiles and you can do much better use with that. Just drop it behind a spacecraft and off you go. It's the best that we just came up with. And the thing is now, I take nuclear pulse propulsion, Nuclear bombs, the best there is. The space shuttle for 40 years, do you know what a mass of nuclear bombs that you have to carry with you to do that job? It's the mass of the sun. OK, and that's just to the next star,
Space Forward: Wow, wow.
Martin Tajmar: That means: forget it, it's not going to happen, not with that type of technology. So there are not two options.
OK, it's not possible. It's not possible in 40 years. It's maybe possibly in ten thousand years. But then I need a generation starship, some huge that has a infrastructure for our civilization to live. But ten thousand years, it's a long time. It's from the Stone Age, up to the modern times and all of that in a confined space, totally crazy.
That's one option that maybe you can do that. But very unlikely. And I think there's a much better option B, actually. And maybe this was our fate. I think for for humans, it's actually going to be a computer that we will send on this journey. The computer, maybe it's not as bored as we are. Ten thousand years to think what we can do. Maybe it was our destiny for humans to develop artificial intelligence and to have a developed being which is not limited by our biological processes. You can think about this in a hundred years for sure. I mean, did they predict that by 20 or 40 years or whatever, artificial intelligence will bypass human intelligence? Well, you add another few decades and you have something very solid and robust and in 100 years, we will send a probe to all these different star systems. It will be like, yeah, I'm not saying the Borg in Star Trek or whatever, but, artificial intelligence, which is not limited.I t's just a time factor.
It's just us humans. We want to do things quickly. Well, there's the speed of light limit. It takes a certain amount of time to go somewhere. And if it's just us, which is the problem, then, well, it's artificial intelligence that can do it and and they can explore the universe. That would be option B. Either you have a Generation Starship or you do the artificial intelligence option unless unless you circumvent this this problem of how we do propulsion nowadays with F=m.a. And as I told you, I didn't finish that. If you have negative mass now, there's a huge trick that you can do. You have positive or negative mass just next to each other and let's say one is positively and the other negatively charged. To attract each other. And the positive mass is being attracted to the negative, from the negative attract a positive one. And the thing is that this negative mass means that this attraction direction for the negative mass flips and instead of moving towards the positive mass, it's actually now going away. These two mass system, this inertial dipole, positive, negative mass will start to self accelerate. OK, you don't do anything. You don't even check energy or a mass. And this dipole is starting to self accelerate now because it's an academic exercise to think if do reach the speed of light, it would leave and go beyond the speed of light.
This is something that we have to prove like Chuck Yeager did. With breaking the sound barrier. I would be happy ready to go with the speed of light. That's OK for me. And you just have to build something that has minus whatever kg. And the thing is, that was Professor Zeilinger did with his crystal in the neutrons, the neutrons only get to the state inside this crystal. That's a problem. We need negative mass here on the outside. It could be that there are negative mass particles in the universe. It's not forbidden. It can just be that we just haven't found it. We have to keep digging or a look with space probes. Maybe it's related to dark energy or whatever. No one knows yet. It can be that there is this kind of discovery being made. “Hey, we just found particles that behave like this.” And it comes to me, if you have that job done, you develop a space drive that space is moving. You don't need to to inject propellant or do something with this. Another method you can think about is to use the vacuum background.We sit on this huge energy density, called Zero-point Energy to use this somehow as a propellant. This would use our ambient space as a propellant. Either would build a space drive or a generation spacecraft or artificial intelligence. Those are the three things.
Space Forward: I was reading on the project that you're working on the Space Drive project. Something very interesting that led me to actually getting a brief understanding of that was your work on breakthrough physics and to try to discover new approaches and now in approaching this type of problem. But I'm also very curious about the work that you did on gravitational field in regards to electrical propulsion systems and that received quite a bit of international recognition - can you give us a background on insight on today's discovery? How did you how did you end?
Martin Tajmar: How it came into electric propulsion? When I I studied physics at the University of Technology in Vienna, this was at a time when there was no Internet. My children, they cannot believe how it's possible to live in a world without the Internet. And there actually was a booklet with all the lectures in there to see, what's being offered and what you can do. And I was very interested, of course, in space propulsion. I was very keen on physics. And, yeah, I had my little lab in in my children room. And I was building huge high voltage power supplies with this kind of stuff because I thought that's what I'm going to need. And when I was browsing this book, I saw one lecture called Electric Space Propulsion. It sound more or less exactly like what I would like to do. And I was in the second semester, very early on, this was already a course for graduate students. I immediately registered. I said, well, that’s exactly my topic. And that's when I was first exposed to to what's being done in so-called electric propulsion. It's not like, well, in chemical propulsion, you combine two propellants to create a hot gas, which is doing propulsion. You actually using electric and or magnetic fields to create acceleration. And if you're propellant is charged, you have ions, plasma, you can accelerate that with electric and magnetic fields to much higher speeds compared to chemical propulsion. And that means that your propellant efficiency is much higher.
You need much less propellant to do the same job. That's very interesting. The downside here is that you have to bring your own electric energy with you. And you're limited, let's say, by the power that you get from solar rays. That improved over time significantly. When I looked into this in the early 1990s, this was still called advanced propulsion. Now, electrical is mainstream technology. You have kilowatts, tens of kilowatts available on the spacecraft. There's lots of power available to electric propulsion. And that's the so-called number one choice for in-space propulsion. Once your satellite is in orbit, you use electric thrusters to keep their or change their orbit, change orientation, whatever, stalling satellites from Spacex. They use their own electrical propulsion - Hall-thruster on board to do the job. Electrical propulsion is the better propulsion option. But you're limited to the fact that you should go to vacuum to do operate this type of thrusters. That means you can only do this in space. And another element is that the amount of forces that you have are much lower because you're limited by the energy. If you think about that, the power density of a chemical combustion chamber. Yeah. That's about one gigawatt per cubic meters. A gigawatt. That's the power output from a nuclear power plant. One gigawatt on the size of one cubic meter. Yeah, on a satellite.
I don't have gigawatts available. I usually have kilowatts and that means I have much lower thrust. But who cares. It takes maybe a few months to get into your orbit. But it just uses a fraction of the propellant. And then my spacecraft can become much smaller, it's much cheaper. It's a big thing. And yeah, I got my hands dirty with lots of electric propulsion options. One that use liquid metal, especially for propellants. We developed a very precise, called field emission thrusters. And I'm building very classical electrical propulsion thrusters always with a certain spin. I always see myself at least two steps ahead of everyone else. If you want to do innovation, I mean, I don't want to do just what everyone else is doing. I always come in with something very unusual and that's that's good. That's why I'm in an university. I'm really trying to push the boundaries into something new. I come up with new materials, new manufacturing schemes and new layouts and, yeah, we have lots of fun building all kinds of different thrusters and improving them.
Space Forward: I'm glad that you brought up the idea, the fact that you are doing this. And I'm very curious to understand, over the course of time and I'm sure the audience too, what are some of the promising concepts other than the ones that we've already talked about? We've talked about nuclear, we've talked about the Hall trusters, we've talked about various types of electrical propulsion systems. What are some of the promising concepts that you think that in the next, 20, 30 years will be more prominent than others?
Martin Tajmar: It's very hard to predict the future.Iif I knew what's going happen in 20 years, then… I can just give you some educated guesses, let's say for electrical propulsion. The thing is that it became such a major business. The key thing here is how to really drastically cut costs. I cannot tell you what's going to happen in 20 or 30 years or so. But I can tell you the next 10 years, lots of things are going to happen with additive manufacturing, new materials, smarter way of doing things that, thrusters that cost millions will sell for a couple of ten thousands or so. That's going to happen, that has already happened. Again, SpaceX, is launching with Starlink - 15000 satellites, 15000 thrusters. You just have to compare this to just a few years ago, when people tried to make a business case for their propulsion and they said, yeah, let's assume they're going to launch maybe five big satellites in the next year or so. And it get a market share of 20 percent we can sell maybe a couple of thrusters. Someone said, oh, I'm going to pick fifteen thousand satellites. Then you cannot sell a million euro dollar type thruster anymore. It's just not going to be possible. The thrusters that we have are pretty good. They just have to drastically improve in cost. It's just going to be much, much cheaper and more accessible to everyone. Yeah, that's a big driving factor. Of course, I'm always working on some unusual electric thrusters concepts just read my publications. It’s fun.
Space Forward I'm curious to hear your thoughts about, the large governmental and non-governmental and commercial organizations that are conducting other types of research, which I'm sure that you have an idea. NASA, Google X, Starshot conducting research into light sales and warp drives. Do you think that we're at a point where it is close to an engineering concept or engineering problem, whereas or it's still a physics problem?
Martin Tajmar: Again, to make it quick for the Warpdrive, again, there is no one knows how to build a Warpdrive. Other than that, I just told you, go and find minus one kilogram and and job is done. I'm I'm trying to fool around the best that I can to to find an answer to the problem. I'm testing everything there is. I'm trying to develop the best test infrastructure to find such kind of effects. I'm concentrating on building really the best thrust balances and whatever there is and then to put everything on to the test and and not only test other concepts, come up with interesting experiments to try to look into into corners that have not been assessed far. You always find something new or unexpected if you look with a new method or if you look into into into a regime that no one has ever checked before. that's what I'm trying to do there. But I mean, I can't give you any kind of guarantee because no one knows if we are going to find something. I really take this as it's just a trick.
Jules Verne once said everything that we can imagine must be possible because we are part of nature. And it's just it's just a trick. OK, if you look at Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If 100 years ago I would have showed someone a smartphone, the best magic trick ever cannot figure it out. Right. I just keep going. Keep going. I try to dig and try to find that I built better test equipment. But I don't stop until I find this magic trick, but there's no guarantee. For this other propellent options that just said like solar cells and whatever for sure that's going to come. That's great. Propellentless propulsion. Again isn't something new because it has been flown, just being improved and being improved on. But but we have new materials. We have maybe in-space manufacturing possibilities, bringing 3D printers into space, which can build huge solar sails. And we just use the photon pressure. The sun doesn't only provide us light, but it has a momentum associated with it. And that's fantastic. We can we can sail around the solar system and well, Breakthrough Starship wants to go Interstellar with that. But there are a couple of challenging technologies that need to be solved to do so, which is, of course, it's great that they keep going and who knows where they will end up with. But it's great that you start up with something. If you if you don't start, then you will know anything. The warp drive, you can forget it. Show me one concept in physics that tells me it's going to work. I can not. That means I shall not give it a try. I don't think so. It has happened many times that you discover something totally unexpected. Superconductivity -no one ever thought about this. It can happen. And what did Kamerlingh Onnes do, he tried to test in a regime that has never been tested before. What's going to happen if I measure electric resistance in very low temperature. He found out that at a certain critical point it disappears. I'm trying to look into regimes no one has looked before with a resolution, a precision no one has done before. I'm trying to do that and trying to find something unexpected.
Space Forward: This brings up an interesting point that I'm sure that you have some thoughts on. The lack of applied research, power or abilities of the past, the freedom of research connected to, doing cutting edge type of research and the continuity of that. There are a lot of organizations, DLR, Flatiron Institute, Simons Foundations, that are making tremendous progress and pretty steady as they're doing it. Do you think that in terms of the power and the capacity that we can apply to research and development is decreased over time? And can we do more in terms of continuing to provide the researchers for the future?
Martin Tajmar: Of course, it's very essential to have very good research environment. I'm very, very fortunate that I was always, working in very good organizations that provide this type of freedom. And especially if you want to do something, that goes far into the future. Well, the best environmental there is, is a university. This is, we think about the future. We're trying to be extremely innovative. That's the right place to do this kind of of of research. The worst thing that can happen is that we learn something from it. It's the perfect education project, I can tell you. My students, if we find the Warp drive or not, but whatever we do to solve a very challenging measurement problems or look into things before, they have a fantastic education. This is much better than to repeat what everyone else is doing. This is a great thing. And of course, we can always do more. And something that I encountered, which is something very important, is to drastically reduce bureaucracy.You have to get rid of this completely.
Many people ask me how come SpaceX launch people into space and NASA can't do it? I said, well, I think I know exactly why.
When I was a Ph.D. student, I was very fortunate to spend a few months at NASA, JPL, and it was really a fantastic time. And I remember I got a I got a desk and I wanted to just get some ballpoint pens and whatever. And I went to the secretary and said, well, I would need a couple of ballpoint pens. And she asked me, , what's your charging number for that? for a few seconds, oh, my God, we will never, ever go back to the moon. I knew it. It's going to be impossible. OK, we can do it. Someone at Boeing told me if you're going to a private individual, if you're going to order the space station, it's going to be for a one twentieth of the cost then if NASA and all those international partners are going to order it. It's absolutely ridiculous. That has to stop immediately. Can you imagine to cut loose the amount of money and the amount of time that researchers have now to put into it. Being productive instead of doing meetings and filling out these forms of bureaucracy.
Space Forward: The community plays a large part in helping to move the government and organizations in that spectrum. From a researcher perspective, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. The involvement of the crowd / public helping research. Know the idea that current researchers are often have a micro community of PhD students, master's students who are conducting these specific type of research - what can we do to enhance that citizen research? The SETI Institute involved a very first community where they inspired research and initiatives through crowdsourcing.
Martin Tajmar: Of course, if private individuals come together and say, well, we would like to fund the Warpdrive, it's fantastic. I just I can open an account where I can accept this kind of donations. If that's possible. That's fantastic. If private people are deciding that this is important and things that can move in this direction, that's for sure. part of the game. And yeah, we can see this probably more frequently, maybe because people are trying to see, if they look for a good investment, maybe they want to invest directly into an idea instead of buying shares. I mean, you don't get any interest at the bank any more. You have to invest. Something that's going to to come. And there I can just encourage to say - no strings attached, I give you some money, and I trust that your ideas will work out. But the best environment for you is to have the least strings attached to a researcher. If you look, for example, at Bell Labs - they get the best people and they say, well, you can do whatever you like is and your partner gets a nice trip too, tell us what you need and you just do whatever you like to. I was I was told by another famous professor who became professor at MIT. He said when he became professor at MIT, the president from M.I.T. came to him and said, I don't care what you are doing, I really don't care. OK, you can do whatever you like to. In four years. I'm coming back. And whatever you did must be world class. That's the only thing that counts. Look, whatever you do, you must be very good.
But don't constrain people. For example, when I'm trying to hire or faculty or something like this, right now it's being done in a very narrow thing. Oh, we need an expert in exactly that and that regime. It's very hard to find this type of people. I tried to convince our faculty to go a little bit in our direction to say, well, let's just say we need something. Someone excellent in aerospace, I don't care particular what she is doing, it must be just a great fit. And to keep it open don't put strings on people, just let them do. And it can be that today he's doing that and maybe in a year she is doing something completely different and becomes really excellent in that. Don't put strings on people let them go.
Space Forward: I know I'm very cognizant of time, and I have a few questions for you about economics of space and we have dived into it a little bit. But I like to get your thoughts on it before we wrap up our episode here with you. I'm a very big proponent of sustainability. Ensuring that we do moving forward in mitigation of the climate change and ensuring that we don't get to that point of no return. How can we make sure that we do that in the orbit?
Martin Tajmar: Well, to have a fully reusable spacecraft is your first step. I mean, right now, you launch something, a huge chunk of useless mass is floating around space. That's ridiculous, right? It's already a very good option to go into space and come back and don't leave anything behind. I mean, that's the best there is. Of course, if you put 15 thousand satellites into space. It will not go back to the days before Sputnik where the sky was completely empty. it's I think It's kind of part of being humans. We grow, we develop. We go somewhere to stay. This has an influence on nature that's undeniable, especially if you do it too much. It's very hard. You can say to people, hey, we are now eight, nine billion people. Stop. How do you want to go to someone and say, hey, I think you should not have a child. It's not right. It's not really possible. It's part of being human. The things develop. Nature, on the other hand, reacts as we can see. That will put limits on everything. Nature will react drastically and we try to put things together. But just the fact that we are many people, let's say everyone is going to use an electric car. That's great. Now where is all the power coming from? If we do too much, it's is always going to become a problem. Always, no matter what you do. We have to live with this.
Space Forward: Here's a question for you, and this is coming from a very economical regulatory standpoint, the rules that FCC brought forward in terms of de-orbiting capabilities on board of satellites, which increases eventual demand for electric propulsion systems. Do you think that this will help the orbit become de-cluttered or do you think that is going to be one of those scenarios where, ,I have this capability, but I want to make my satellites stay up there for longer?
Martin Tajmar: For example, here in Germany, if you bring something into space, this something has to be de-orbit in 25 years. Either you have de-orbit means that you really get away from space, you can re-enter again or you move farther away such that you make space for someone else. But that means that you just move your graveyard a little bit away. You still put a huge chunk of stuff up there. So, again, Elon Musk is dealing very smart of Starlink. The Starlink Satellites are flying in such a low orbit that even if you don't do anything, they will de-orbit automatically in a year or so. You don't keep, if you launch so many satellites, you don't keep them in space. That's something great already. De-orbiting strategies are very important. We are working on a great de-orbing project. But, maybe once we have a fully reusable spacecraft, we can really deploy huge nets in space to really collect all the garbage, and bring it back. It’s not moving in the direction that actually the sky's becoming cleaner, it's actually going in the other direction. There will be more junk up there for sure. Just imagine one satellite hits another one that creates much more junk. We we screwed it up.
Space Forward: Absolutely, absolutely, I totally agree with that, and I think hopefully we don't get to a point where it becomes a point of no return for us. I'm very cognizant of time and I don't want to take too much of yours. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this: to each and every single guest, we would typically ask, how do you think that we can help ensure that space continues to move forward?
Martin Tajmar: I think this is, again, something very natural. We came from the water. We came onto the land. We built ships to go to other continents. Then we discovered how to fly. And and the next thing in space this is in our DNA, cannot stop this. Even if you would put a stop on all space activities, just wait one generation and this will come up again. It's part of our DNA. It's going to happen. The best support at the moment, if you really want to go to space, is to support Elon Musk and maybe Jeff Bezos. That's the best I can think of. This is, again, the chance of a century. It would not happen otherwise. So, that's the best I can do.
Space Forward: Well, I think I'd like to add on to that point to support Martin in helping ensure that his research continues to move forward. But I truly appreciate…
Martin Tajmar: Thank you much.
Space Forward: …the time that you've taken today, and I'm sure our audience has as well. And thank you much for coming in and dropping by. I am sure that eventually in the future, with the amount of work that you're doing, we're going to have you on board again for another topic similar to this or even further on, because I'm a big fan of the work that you've done, and I think it's going to help evolve and improve the industry as a whole.
Martin Tajmar: Thank you very much.
Space Forward: Thank you.