Pulsed inductive thruster
Okay kiddo, so you know how rockets work right? They use a lot of fuel and fire it out the back really fast to go up into space. But, there's another way we can make spaceships move forward without using lots of fuel like that. It's called a pulsed inductive thruster.
So, imagine a coil of wire. When we pass an electric current through it, it creates a magnetic field. Now, imagine we have a disk-shaped piece of metal that we want to move forward. If we put that disk inside the coil of wire and pass an electric current through it really fast, then the magnetic field will push the disk forward.
But, we don't want to just keep pushing the disk in one direction forever. That would be boring, and also not really good for navigating in space. So, what we do is we turn the current on and off in really quick bursts, like a flickering lightbulb. This makes the magnetic field push the disk forward in a pulsed way, which is why it's called a pulsed inductive thruster.
This kind of thruster doesn't use a lot of fuel, so it's really good for spaceships that need to go long distances. It's not as fast as rockets, but it's more efficient. And now you know how it works - easy peasy!
So, imagine a coil of wire. When we pass an electric current through it, it creates a magnetic field. Now, imagine we have a disk-shaped piece of metal that we want to move forward. If we put that disk inside the coil of wire and pass an electric current through it really fast, then the magnetic field will push the disk forward.
But, we don't want to just keep pushing the disk in one direction forever. That would be boring, and also not really good for navigating in space. So, what we do is we turn the current on and off in really quick bursts, like a flickering lightbulb. This makes the magnetic field push the disk forward in a pulsed way, which is why it's called a pulsed inductive thruster.
This kind of thruster doesn't use a lot of fuel, so it's really good for spaceships that need to go long distances. It's not as fast as rockets, but it's more efficient. And now you know how it works - easy peasy!