06-19-2017, 08:12 AM
(06-18-2017, 09:52 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: That's very cool! I'm surprised it's taken this long to implement technology like this. I would have guessed magnets would be used, but I guess that would be very hard to make fail safe.
More likely magnets are less able to be controlled. Permanent magnets are very challenging in space-confined areas to apply/remove from objects, especially without large forces. Electromagnets would require a good deal of knowledge about the ship and area materials, such that you wouldn't see different ferromagnetic properties of different ship materials adversely affected, as the magnetism won't exist solely in an enclosed space the way the suction does.