Yes, the article also points out that the idea is not new, but rather that this research was focused on addressing practical problems, such as corrosion of the engine's parts.

Ideas require a ton of research to transform into reality.

~5x closer than what remote sensing satellites use today and thus could get 5x the resolution for the same instrument.

I would think a bit less. You won’t get a factor of 5 decrease in atmosphere to watch through and I would guess you’d get more vibration.

An Alcubierre drive is not a new idea either, but if someone demonstrated one I would be mightily impressed.

That is an extreme example for multiple reasons, of course, but the point is that the gulf between idea and working thing is often monstrous. Ideas are cheap, implementation is hard.

100km is the height where meteoroids ablate. You must mean 100k miles and even there the largest meteors start to become visible.

Indeed at the bottom tfb quotes heights of 190-250km for model calculations.

It may never work then:)

The Earth's upper atmosphere is delicate. It's already being disturbed with rocket fuel residue and particulate space junk. Vacuuming up air and ionizing it risks putting the upper atmosphere even more out of balance.

if only it could be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere..

The thing is is this kind of engine does better than a regular one +big tank of propeller in the lifetime of a VLEO satellite, which due to newer regulation by the US is 5 years, so you don't really need eve a big tank

Feels like someone SpaceX would be very interested in hiring.

Too bad this wasn’t available for SWIFT.