[ExI] A Geophysics problem

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sep 30, 2558 BE, at 7:42 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 5:00 AM,  Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> snip
>> 
>> My non-expert guess is the amount is trivial compared with the baseline by three or four orders of magnitude. Still, there might be small regions where it might not be trivial. And, again, we can get some data from existing electric propulsion use as well from neutral exhaust to see how quickly it clears the system.
> 
> The particles trapped in the Earth's field is on the order of single
> digit kilograms and the residence time is around 6 months.  In half a
> year the reaction mass expended by a power satellite project is around
> a million tons or 10^9 kg.  Swamping the existing particles by a
> billion fold seems likely to do something.

I misread the Tribble book because my earlier figures were way way way too high. I conflated plasma density with grams. :@ By the way, not that it helps much, but it appears that LEO it's high density low energy and at GEO low density high energy -- if the trend is smooth.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
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