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Re: starship-design: Plasma power



Johnny Thunderbird wrote:
> 
> Folks are too worried about making a static sort of fusion reaction,
> contained in a can so they know just where it's happening. The number one
> fact about space is that there's plenty of room. That means you can use
> accelerators to produce fusion, which is easy, rather than try to compress,
> contain and confine an energetic plasma, which is hard. Using particle
> accelerators is the only way we know that these reactions happen, and these
> fusions have been done in detail, decades ago, in the energetic beams of
> accelerators. Fusion research on Earth is concentrated on making it happen
> in a can, and that's hard. To use fusion for space drives, we can use the
> well-known accelerator research, because we don't mind if our entire
> reaction is going thataway real fast, because that is just what we want to
> do: our entire purpose is to make it go thataway real fast.


You still have to contain the reaction on earth or in space.
Note you could have a hole at one end in a space reactor for direct
thrust but you need to have the plasma still burn.

  
> In that aspect, all Earthbound fusion power projects are false leads, and
> trying to pursue the ephemeral deuterium-tritium reaction, in particular, is
> a big red herring. To make a fusion space drive, all we need is the mature
> and well-studied technology of fusion induced by beams from accelerators.
>
Why is  deuterium a red herring, I think some devices fusion only needs
a factor of 100x improvement to be practical. Note fusion web sites have been
rather outdated for a while.


> 
> How long can a linac (linear accelerator) be in space? There's plenty of
> room, right?
>

  Ummm 16 feet ... thats all the room I have in my garage to build the sucker :)
  I think a linac needs to 1/3 of a mile long, but that information is from
  memory from a Scientific American in the 70's? Linacs I think use heavy
magnets
  too. The Best fusion reactor is the Electro static confinement devices for
space
  like the ones designed at "starships-design" home page or at 
  http://www.songs.com/philo/fusion/index.html.

> On redirect,
> Johnny Thunderbird
> http://members.100free.com/users/jthunderbird

-- 
"We do not inherit our time on this planet from our parents...
 We borrow it from our children."
"Ancient Logic" http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/al/index.html