~45,000 pounds of thrust from an ION engine?

[Brickmuppet]

Wait. What?
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/electrospray-ion-drive-scalable-to-thousands-of-times-the-thrust-of-existing-ion-drives.html#more-147142
https://www.accion-systems.com/our-technology/

I was sure that I'd converted from Newtons wrong so I went to an online calculator and it's like 44963 pounds of thrust (20395kg) from a thruster that measures 35x35x16 CENTIMETERS.
Am I reading this right? Because it looks like (given a long enough extension cord) that we're almost in ion helicopter territory here. (I do note that there is an asterix on the attached chart that begs for elaboration)

Also, it doesn't use exotic fuels either.

This would seem rather consequential if its not vaporware.

That's a big "IF" though.

UPDATE: Alright, I found the what the asterix is for. It simply references the fact that the units are scalable.
https://www.accion-systems.com/tile

 

[TomS]

I'm not sure how you're doing the math here. The Tile 200k that fits those dimensions has a maximum thrust of 10 milliNewtons (about .0022 lbf). That's very small.

Are you looking at the total impulse number? That refers to the total force the thruster can produce, but it's spread over some amount of time, not the instantaneous thrust delivered.

200,000 Newton-seconds/0.01 Newtons = 20,000,000 seconds (231 days).

So it runs for a long time, but it produces very tiny thrust. Perfect for satellite station-keeping thrusters, not so much for helicopters.

 

[Brickmuppet]

So that's the total thrust it develops over the entire life of the drive...so you don't read this thrust rating the same way you do a Raptor or an F-1 then?

Oh.OK. I KNEW I was doing something wrong.

Yes that is exactly what I did.

Sorry for bothering everyone.

 

[TomS]

So that's the total thrust it develops over the entire life of the drive...so you don't read this thrust rating the same way you do a Raptor or an F-1 then?

Right. Thrust is measured in Newtons. Total impulse is in Newton-seconds, which is thrust times burn time. Or as rocket scientists typically say, it's the area under the thrust curve, which is more useful for rockets where thrust varies over time.

For these Accion ion engines, the total burn time is limited by the reaction mass (ionic fluid) built into the thruster module.

Total impulse for something like a Raptor or F-1 depends on how much reaction mass you have onboard to feed it; you can't do that math independent of the vehicle and its associated tankage.

 

[Avimimus]

Sorry for bothering everyone.

No need to apologise. I can learn from your mistakes

It is part of the reason we talk to each other eh?