blog posts

So, until about a year ago, I was victim of a misunderstanding that made me very, very confused about how plasmas were made. I had read, in many places, about the designs for ion thrusters and plasma thrusters and VASIMR and even plasma enhanced chemical vapor...

Hello Orbital Friends! It's Friday, so here's what Orbital Arc was up to the last two weeks (since last Friday was the day after Thanksgiving, and I skipped an update). First, the annealing furnace at Rice is still broken, so lab progress remains stalled. This is a...

It's Monday! Let's talk about specific impulse. Specific impulse (otherwise known as ISP) is to spacecraft what miles-per-gallon is to your old internal combustion engine car. It's fuel efficiency. ISP is what determines how much push (or, formally, "impulse,"...

It's Friday! Let's talk through Orbital Arc's progress this week, with a bit of backtracking about molybdenum. Also, strap in folks - this one gets technical. So, this week I have focused on two things primarily: 1. Evaluating potential ion fuel options. And 2....

Orbital Arc is developing a new type of ion engine. Great, but sounds pretty sci-fi. What is an ion engine, anyway? For that matter, what is an ion? Let's get back to basics. (NASA test of a Hall Effect Thruster (HET) for Gateway lunar space station; HETs are one...

So, back in June, Orbital Arc wrapped up our time at the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator in Tennessee with a big demo day, and eager plans to fundraise about a $500k pre-seed round to hire our first three people, and finish up our first prototype. And...