@humy saidReally cool idea.
Sounds like a crazy idea but if you listen to this video you will find it actually makes sense and is practical and it could be very useful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-d_TASwwOQ
Just a few points:
* I am actually not a fan of those micro satellites. The Junk in Space, which is mentioned is one reason.
* using the described technique might be quite expensive. For a proof of concept we would "just" need a temperature measurement to start and stop the water/steam flow.
* Of course it would be advisable to have some kind of control about the acceleration direction. And here we come to the dark side. A "mirco sattellite" with about 5 kg accelerated to about 1000 m/s could easily act as a weapon...
@Ponderable
Well now that the cat is out there is no going back micro's are here to stay for good or bad.
For stream propulsion, you would still need a source of heat to get the water past 100C, and of course the higher the temp the more thrust so there would be a limit on how much energy you could stick into such a device but the thing is small enough not to need more than a few milli-newtons to move around in space.
@sonhouse saidYou are right on this one...but I would rather have regulations to keep them in low orbits, so that at least the junk problem is in bounds.
@Ponderable
Well now that the cat is out there is no going back micro's are here to stay for good or bad.
@Ponderable
I think for now that is all they are planning. Of course that will no doubt change.
One thing I see, a fleet of such sats a million miles from Earth and each one with a small RF dish and a fleet of hundreds of them spread out over a million miles of space which would make for a super radio astronomy net with a thousand times the resolution of Earth bound antennae. Each one with a blow up RF dish say 10 meters in diameter times several hundred spread out and combining their signals to make for a dish with an effective radius of a million Kilometers or so.