A New Class of Heat Engine for Space Application AIAA 2007-5123

A new class of heat engine succeeds in the direct conversion of thermal/kinetic energy to a sustained accelerative vector force without the expulsion of reaction mass. No Newtonian principle is violated, and mass, energy, and momentum are conserved. These engines rely upon the properties of a gas in steady-state flow in a recirculating duct, and the manipulation of the density and velocity of this gas by means of thermal management. The resulting propulsion system is a conventional heat engine in all respects except that it offers a self-referential method of accelerating itself and an attached mass given a source of energy and a means of cooling. The engine is simple in concept and design, scalable, and may contain only one moving part. This article describes the theory of operation and the working prototypes (TRL-4), and proposes the application of the method