Both missions were important technical demonstrations for the further development of electrical space propulsion systems. In an ion propulsion system, electrons are fired into a magnetic field ...

The “caterpillar drive” in The Hunt for Red October allowed the sub to travel virtually undetected through the ocean, but real examples of magnetohydrodynamic drives (MHDs) are rare.

Some types of magnetic field have the same corrosive ... MHD drives should need much less maintenance than existing propulsion systems. "But the real reason everybody's interested in it is that ...