"Fusion Engines" Topic
8 Posts
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| SECURITY MINISTER CRITTER | 30 Apr 2013 6:47 a.m. PST |
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 Parzival  | 30 Apr 2013 9:27 a.m. PST |
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| SECURITY MINISTER CRITTER | 30 Apr 2013 9:55 a.m. PST |
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| Streitax | 30 Apr 2013 11:14 a.m. PST |
Ohhh, yeah, travel with a small sun burning right behind you. |
| Parzival | 30 Apr 2013 12:10 p.m. PST |
Better than right in front of you! |
| Patrick R | 30 Apr 2013 1:04 p.m. PST |
It's a nifty idea, but there is one tiny nitpick, we still don't know if a sustained fusion is feasible as a power source. We're about a decade or two away from finding out if the reactors we are currently building actually work or we need to junk it and go back to the drawing board. |
| Bowman | 06 May 2013 7:13 a.m. PST |
But Patrick, that is how Science works. Fusion reactors have been working for over the last 3 decades. None of them are a good power source. But they are getting closer to the tipping point of output energy equalling the input energy. |
| Parzival | 07 May 2013 3:03 p.m. PST |
But they are getting closer to the tipping point of output energy equalling the input energy. Which isn't the goal of a rocket anyway. What we want is just a way of producing as much thrust as possible. Yes, we want it to be as efficient as possible, but that's not necessary to make the rocket move. For that, we want to eject mass at high velocity, the higher of each we can achieve, the better. Fusion offers the chance to reach much higher velocity ejection of mass than is even remotely possible with chemical rockets (which we use now). Where efficiency comes into play is largely in the amount of payload (including the engine itself) which the engine will have to move. But theoretically, the energy requirement to produce that thrust could indeed be higher than the energy in the thrust and the rocket design would still be effective. |
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