Re: RE: starship-design: Pellet track

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/18/97 1:55:50 PM, you wrote:

>Kelly,
>
>Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the Russians successfully initiate a 
>fusion reaction in a Stellarator in the 70s or 80s? It would seem to me that
>a Stellarator is nothing more than a magnetic confinement rocket engine...
>
>Lee


Initiate, is different from maintaining.  Lots of magnetic confinement
systems have started fusion.  But just about none got out more power then
they put in, and few could keep the system runing more then a tiny fraction
of a secound.  Magnetic confinement is considered a NASTY way to try to do
this.  Comercial concerns have pretty well written it off as unusable (much
to the anoyence of U.S. government researchers).

Kelly