How to Colonize an
Asteroid
How to Colonize an
Asteroid
Basically, the "Nail Shooter" is a simple test and demonstration platform for linear induction engines. It is very crude, basically shooting small wood and iron projectiles out the end of a plastic drinking straw at high velocity. The chassis for the whole thing is the case from a 35mm filmstrip projector which I purchased at a Ham Radio show for $1.50 All of the controls and the accelerator tube are mounted on hand drawn and etched printed circuit boards. I just drew the wiring patterns directly onto the copper boards with a resist ink pen and etched them in Ferric Chloride, which I purchased from my local Radio Shack store. I also made a custom printed circuit board to mount all three of the capacitive discharge supplies and the DC power supply on the same board. The projectile detectors are mounted on clothes pins along the tube, with another printed circuit board for the detection and trigger electronics.
Click here for an overall system schematic diagram. This will load an image file which you can print on an 8.5" X 11" page if you set your printer for "landscape" mode.
