Nick's amazing obligatory introduction post!!1!

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Nick Babusis
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Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2022 12:11 pm
Real name: Nick Babusis

Nick's amazing obligatory introduction post!!1!

Post by Nick Babusis »

My name is Nick Babusis, and I'm a student at Purdue University studying electric and chemical space propulsion. I do a LOT of hobby projects on a shoestring budget (and post some to Instagram, @the_science_dump). Some of my favorites are:
-balloon launches up to 120k ft (with the eventual goal of launching rockets to the Karman line!)
-home-made lasers and nonlinear optical setups
-K-class rockets and rocket motors
-Tesla coils, discharge tubes, CRTs, and microwave mods
-imaging systems for radio, visible, x-ray, and gamma rays, and alpha particles
-metal casting
-cloud chambers

For school, I am working on a SPT-100 Hall thruster, 500psi hybrid rocket demonstrator, and developing a 2kN solid rocket motor.
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Paul_Schatzkin
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Re: Nick's amazing obligatory introduction post!!1!

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Tell me more about your electric space propulsion.

Is Townsend Brown on your radar?

ttbrown.com

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television: 2023 Edition – https://amz.run/6ag1
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
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Nick Babusis
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2022 12:11 pm
Real name: Nick Babusis

Re: Nick's amazing obligatory introduction post!!1!

Post by Nick Babusis »

It's pretty neat! I mainly operate a Russian built SPT-100 Hall effect thruster, which gets an Isp of ~1500s. I'm trying to get it to reduce plasma instabilities and experimenting with hot wire neutralizer designs. I have also done a bit of work using a KDC-40 gridden ion source and have done some modeling work for the NASA solar cruiser mission, although I was working on the camera system for that.

I'd never heard of Townsend Brown before but I have messed around with some ionic wind generators. "Plasma channel" has a nice youtube video on a design I'd like to try eventually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEBoPY ... smaChannel
William Turner
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Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:09 am
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Re: Nick's amazing obligatory introduction post!!1!

Post by William Turner »

Welcome, Nick.

Perdue is near where I grew up. Great school.

What kind of diagnostics to you have on the Hall effect thruster to determine the level or type of instabilities?
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