I think the battery just powers the pumps that push the fuel into the combustion chamber. But it still runs on refined dinosaurs.
Apparently the batteries power the pumps,but the here’s still propellant that creates the thrust. Pretty conventional.
Space is going to get crowded.
The Rutherford Engine is an electric turbo-pumped LOX/RP-1 engine specifically designed for the Electron launch vehicle, capable of 4,600 lbf thrust and with an ISP of 327 s.
Rutherford adopts an entirely new propulsion cycle, making use of brushless DC motors and high performance Lithium Polymer batteries to drive its turbo pumps.
Rutherford is also the first oxygen/hydrocarbon engine to use additive manufacturing for all primary components, including the regeneratively cooled thrust chamber, injector, pumps, and main propellant valves.
Electron uses two variants of the Rutherford engine, a sea level and a vacuum engine. The vacuum variant differs only in nozzle shape, which is tailored to suit the vacuum conditions outside Earth’s atmosphere. The duplicate engine design for both stages makes Electron highly optimized for fast production.
The engine is named after the famous New Zealand born physicist Ernest Rutherford.
It's not an electric rocket.
If you think there is a lot of space junk out there now just wait until there are “hundreds of thousands” of satellites in low earth orbit.
A company called Escape Dynamics is working on a rocket powered by microwave beams on the ground.
I thought this was a thread about Hillary’s campaign launch.
Yep, it only needs its batteries, electric motors and turbopumps—no fuel or combustion! Just listen to the rumble and the wind!
The Marching Morons
By C. M. Kornbluth
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluthcm-marchingmorons/kornbluthcm-marchingmorons-00-e.html