With a car sent into space could a spacecraft run on a petrol engine?

Could it be done?

Say an airtight engine.

And where the air intake is fit a pressurized air tank.

What about the exhaust? would the vacuum of space try to suck out too much, would a smaller hole be required to slow it down?

Would the exhaust propel the craft?

Also could the engine flywheel drive a generator to power an ion drive?

Thus giving two propulsion methods, ion and exhaust?

That is if exhaust can be used to work.

what you gunna do when it runs out of petrol?

Could a craft run on compressed gas in space?

Could solar energy be used to compress the gas in space?

Not a petrol engine, but still might be interesting to you:

https://jalopnik.com/a-nascar-team-is-building-the-first-internal-combustion-1783198912?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

While there’s been a number of cars launched into space – a couple human-driven ones on the moon, a bunch of robotic ones on Mars, for example – no internal-combustion piston engine has ever left Earth. That makes sense since, you know, they don’t work outside the atmosphere. Until now. Currently in development is the first ICE designed to go into space, and it’s an old-school straight-6, built by people who make NASCAR engines.

Those people building the engine are the team at Roush Fenway Racing, and they’re building the engine as part of United Launch Alliance’s Integrated Vehicle Fluids (IVF) program. IVF is a very clever concept that would take a given rocket stage’s multiple fluids and systems and reduce them down so that just hydrogen and oxygen are needed.

What IVF hopes to do in ULA’s Vulcan rocket upper stage is to eliminate the complexity and mass of the current way of doing things by limiting fluids to liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and using an internal combustion engine—like the ones used in cars for over a century—to provide electrical power, heat for vaporizing fluids to act as pressurants, and settling thrust from exhaust, all for much less weight than batteries and multiple fluid storage tanks.

The “retro” design of the I6 is reminiscent of a classic Ford flathead V-8 design of the 1930s. These engines, while being incredibly tough, had a reputation for requiring oversized radiators since exhaust gas passages were close to block cooling passages and more heat than typical was transferred to the coolant. This heat rejection feature is much desired in the IVF engine since we wish to scavenge heat for tank pressurization. This allows us to eliminate the extraction of heat from the thrusters, a feature of earlier IVF designs, and keep all heat exchange functions within the engine. The engine head, which bridges the length of the engine, contains the heat exchange surfaces for rejecting heat to incoming hydrogen combustion gas, as well as vaporizing both liquid hydrogen and oxygen for tank pressurization.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Could a craft run on compressed gas in space?

Could solar energy be used to compress the gas in space?

No, not in any practical sense. You could only run it by releasing a supply of compressed gas, the spacecraft would need to take a supply of compressed gas up there with it. Which is heavy and inefficient. Much better to take liquid or solid fuel and turn it into a gas through combustion or other chemical reaction.

Yes.
Yes.
It’d be fine with the correct optimisation.
Yes, having the engine vent into the vacuum of space is about the same as having a super or turbo charger running at about 14.7 psi boost. (More efficient in fact)

It’s already been thought of as well. -> https://jalopnik.com/a-nascar-team-is-building-the-first-internal-combustion-1783198912

Tau.Neutrino said:

With a car sent into space could a spacecraft run on a petrol engine?

Could it be done?

Say an airtight engine.

And where the air intake is fit a pressurized air tank.

What about the exhaust? would the vacuum of space try to suck out too much, would a smaller hole be required to slow it down?

Would the exhaust propel the craft?

Also could the engine flywheel drive a generator to power an ion drive?

Thus giving two propulsion methods, ion and exhaust?

That is if exhaust can be used to work.

I worry about diesel powered submarines. Much the same problem happens there, with the limited air supply.

Have a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-independent_propulsion

For an oxygen source, compressed air has been used, as has hydrogen peroxide with a potassium permanganate catalyst, and hydrogen peroxide in a Walter engine (whatever that is).

“Closed-cycle diesel engines. This technology uses a submarine diesel engine which can be operated conventionally on the surface, but which can also be provided with oxidant, usually stored as liquid oxygen, when submerged. Since the metal of an engine will burn in pure oxygen, the oxygen is usually diluted with recycled exhaust gas. Argon is used for starting.”

Stirling cycle engines and fuel cells can also both burn liquid fuel using liquid oxygen.

Tau.Neutrino said:

With a car sent into space could a spacecraft run on a petrol engine?

Could it be done?

Say an airtight engine.

And where the air intake is fit a pressurized air tank.

What about the exhaust? would the vacuum of space try to suck out too much, would a smaller hole be required to slow it down?

Yesss but obviously the car would not “work” in that cars are designed to move by traction of wheels on a road. They require a road. And gravity, really.

Would the exhaust propel the craft?

Yeah I’ll give you that.

Tau.Neutrino said:

With a car sent into space could a spacecraft run on a petrol engine?

Could it be done?

Say an airtight engine.

And where the air intake is fit a pressurized air tank.

To summarise what I said above. Yes, airtight engine. LOX beats pressurised air tank, diluted with exhaust gas to limit corrosion.

Tau.Neutrino said:

What about the exhaust? would the vacuum of space try to suck out too much, would a smaller hole be required to slow it down?

Would the exhaust propel the craft?

Also could the engine flywheel drive a generator to power an ion drive?

Thus giving two propulsion methods, ion and exhaust?

That is if exhaust can be used to work.

The same exhaust pipe would work. The vacuum of space makes the engine more efficient by reducing the exhaust back-pressure on the engine (except where exhaust recycled to dilute LOX). Oh, and you may not need a muffler.

The two propulsion mechanisms rob power from one another. The exhaust normally would provide no more extra power than it does in jet-powering a standard car. If you make propulsion from the exhaust more efficient then it robs power from the flywheel. Perhaps I can explain it best this way, the power of an engine comes from the expansion of hot gas. If the expansion occurs in the engine then I get flywheel power, if instead it occurs in the exhaust then I get rocket power from the exhaust, if it occurs in both together then because of thermodynamics the total power out from both sources is less than either on its own.

Ion drive? Checks Google. “The power processing unit (PPU) converts the electrical power from a power source — usually solar cells or a nuclear heat source — into the voltages needed for the hollow cathodes to operate, to bias the grids, and to provide the currents needed to produce the ion beam.” In this case the electrical power would come from the alternator. So yes, it’s possible, but I can’t immediately see how efficient it would be. The normal advantage of the ion drive is that it produces a very low thrust over a very long period of time, but burning fuel is most efficient when it happens quickly before the heat leaks out of the engine by conduction.