3D magnetic flux plasma pressure modelling

elivsvonchiaing

Apologies if this has been thought of before: (I'm not claiming copyright, patents or anything - just to acknowledge your source).

Since SS Columbia went into alka seltzer mode I've been thinking about atmospheric re-entry. Recently it occured to me that at re-entry a space shuttle is capable of building up a significant lead-gas-plasma (before it dissolves). (That's lead as in leader not Pb)

If it could survive long-enough with some gas-plasma in front of it - would a highly intense magnetic field be enough to inflate what I think of as a plasma umbrella? (This would consist of a buffer zone of plasma forced some metres away from the shuttle - in front and a fanned tail of free (accelerated) electrons (even then I concede there are problems with radiated heat).

I think as a given the craft would have to be mainly knitted from (very long) carbon nano-tubes or something - can't see Al working here. Crew needs magnetic shielding etc. OK. We could be talking HAL here - but money is on he'll still be made of silicon so same applies. There are a lot of probs needing resolving.

The point being - I know this is far beyond our technological capabilities at present. (Power is probably the biggest problem). In order to work out if this could work I think the only way is a computer model/simulation - probably at the cubic mm level to start with and then if viable we look at quantum effects.

There exists a problem with this - I've no idea where to begin to get maths to do this - if you can give me this - I'll code it.

Anyone got the maths for any of this?

No egos please - I really believe this is a jig-saw puzzle only achievable by team effort.


I will add further comment - please ignore if you have answers to above, but feel intimitaded by this:

I'm not too worried (with sufficient help) to simulate the inflated "plasma umbrella". I think the difficult bit is pre-inflation.


Thoughts on the following would be appreciated: On the edge of atmosphere the craft will hit 28KKph on the normal approach vector. My guess is that 1650oC would not be hot enough to open the umbrella. There will be ions in this - are they enough - or do we need higher charge density/plasma. Or would just throwing more magnetic flux at it solve the problem keeping in mind we don't want to suck ferrous space debris from 10 KM away either.

elivsvonchiaing

elivsvonchiaing wrote:

but feel intimitaded by this:

What can I say - I meant to lie about what I believed - this is really the intimidating problem - the "do not" disappeared - the post was meant to contain a "do not" in this sentence. Should have read : "but do not feel intimidated by this". Freudian slip? If there are no other replies to this before 31/08/04 feel free to reply on the Freudian slip basis. otherwise bog-off with irrelevant comments. EUCHARISTO. TAI XIE XIE. TERIMEHKASAH etc.

elivsvonchiaing

I've found some pages on this and they look like this:
\nabla \cdot \mathbf{D} = \rho |- || |-
Is there some plugin to display math correctly - or is this something from a Unix box that will never display on explorer?

SkepticOne

elivsvonchiaing wrote:

I've found some pages on this and they look like this:
\nabla \cdot \mathbf{D} = \rho |- || |-
Is there some plugin to display math correctly - or is this something from a Unix box that will never display on explorer?

Looks like Tex/Latex the typesetting system. There are various distributions one of which is here.

elivsvonchiaing

SkepticOne wrote:

Looks like Tex/Latex the typesetting system. There are various distributions one of which is here.

Thanks for that does the job nicely. But what exactly does "+" mean

I couldn't resist as I find some stuff familiar and other stuff alien - need to learn Hamiltonian stuff which I never did before.