Re: Re: starship-design: Genuine STR question

[KellySt@aol.com]

Kelly,



>

> Even AIMSTAR has more waste heat than that.

>

> One of the Reason I like the Bussard reactor designs.



Although not currently practicable, I prefer the Bussard design myself.



>

> KW!  A house takes KW.  These engines would be at least pumping around K

> megawatts.



I think you mistook what I was saying. Current designs all rely on some

fusion or antimatter based engine, the particular engine is irrelevant. All

of these engines require some sort of massive energy hog system to either

initiate or contain the reaction, in many cases both. So the engine requires

we have gigawatts of power already available just to light the fire so to

speak. My point was:



a) recovery of waste heat is probably an insignificant factor at these power

levels, and



b) any generator capable of providing us with gigawatts to start and run the

engines, can spare a few kW or even mW to run shipboard systems such as

electronics, heat, air conditioning, etc.

I know - thats what I ment.  I'm saying if that KW isn't enough to run the air
conditioning and stuff in a house.  Thats not going to run the life support of
a starship.





>From a purely engineering point of view, the better the engine, the less

waste heat we would have, therefore even less would be available for

recovery to provide shipboard power. At the moment though, this isn't the

case. Current systems are so inefficient that there is actually quite a bit

left over as waste heat.



Lee Parker



Kelly