• Volumetric expansion suppresses thermal choking in low-pressure plasma reactors • Supersonic expansion (M ≈ 5–6) preserves vibrational non-equilibrium, enabling 11.98 eV/CO₂ • ~100× reduction in recombination enables linear conversion growth instead of early saturation • Operation at native Martian pressure avoids upstream compression energy penalties • General gas-dynamic framework validated for scalable plasma reactor design
Adrian Scurtu (2026) studied this question.