Startup Working on Spacecraft Designed to Eat Dead Satellites for Fuel

A British startup called Magdrive claims to have developed a satellite that uses solid metal as a source of fuel. Its founder says it could even one day be used to clean up space junk — by gobbling up dead satellites and using them for propulsion. As CNN reports, the company came up with a propulsion system, dubbed Warlock, that ionizes solid metal, instead of current electric systems that generate power by ionizing pressurized gas. The goal is to balance efficiency with power output. "Chemical propulsion has very high thrust, but its efficiency — or its miles per gallon, if you like — is very poor," Magdrive founder Mark Stokes told CNN. "On the other hand, electric propulsion systems these days have the complete opposite characteristics. They have very low thrust, but excellent efficiency, excellent miles per gallon." "We’re building the first system of its kind that has the best of both worlds," he added. "It is electric propulsion, but it has a magnitude improvement in thrust, ... Read full article.