IMO, no large rotating settlement, such as an O'Neill, will ever be flown "naked". It'll either be built inside an asteroid, or surrounded by a non-rotating shell serving the same role.
Neat! I like the plasma magnet idea in general. I'm curious how big of a magnetosphere bubble this can generate in practice (in a real space environment, with real materials that have limits on critical current and critical temperature). If the bubble is indeed orders of magnitude larger than the superconducting coil itself, and also efficiently transfers momentum from the solar wind to the ship, as the proponents claim, then it could be a real game changer.
Previous thread on this: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50611.0
Has anyone seen some extrapolation of how big this system would need to be, in order to maintain these mission times while carrying several tons (manned missions)?Would it be feasible?
Though it is substantially easier to design a 16U demonstrator to fly as a secondary payload on a 'mission to anywhere' (it's a demonstrator, as long as the orbit is suitable for the thermal environment it needs you don't really care where it is or can go) on any launch vehicle available, than it is to wed a large project solely to a single future launch system.
Please see my comments above in "Rotating Magnetic Field as a Propeller in the Solar Wind" , K HambschHello Michel!!!
Has there been any consideration of using this technology as a mechanism for slowing down a vehicle, ie for inner-planet fast transfers (superior to inferior) or interstellar deceleration?
The Plasma Magnetic sail collects electrons, not Ions.The speed of rotation (of the mag. field) is ~ 3 hertz at 1AU. This rotational speed is just below the cyclotron resonant frequency of the electrons and is too fast for the ions/protons to "catch up" to it, per their significant mass. This rotational speed drops as the sail moves farther away from the sun to compensate for the drop in dynamic pressure.Additionally, although the coils are round in shape they do not form an electron populated globe-like shape...Goes without saying that because the coils are at different distances from the center axis there will be a different distance-rotational speed MF relationship. Dr. Slough suggests the sail would take on a disk shape. Good thing for that as it would make the sail steerable. Am going to have to snip an image from the paper that best illustrates why the sail is disk like. Will modify/ attach it on the morrow. FL
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2021/11/19/wind-rider-a-high-performance-magsail/"The Plasma Magnet was proposed by Slough [5]