Re: starship-design: Fusion Cone Scoop

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

bugzapper writes:
 > Since I figured a week or two ago, that free gas in space has enormous
 > potential chemical energy, I have looked for a way to make use of this
 > resource.

You may think it's enormous, but it's probably not enormous in
comparison to the amount of energy needed to run a ramscoop starship and
boost the ship to relativistic speeds.  As I said before, even with the
optimistic estimates of interstellar gas density you believe in, it's
questionable whether a ramscoop can really collect enough fuel to work
even by fusion.  If you cut the amount of energy you get by several
orders of magnitude by using it for chemical energy rather than fusion,
then it makes the numbers far, far worse.