A group has been recently claiming that it would only cost $20M to
develop a fusion rocket:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-tiny-fusion-rockets-revolutionize-spaceflight/
Ain't no engineering delusions like fusion delusions.
On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:40 PM, Ken Hollis <gandalf@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greetings and Salutations:
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Henry Spencer
On Tue, 20 Jun 2017, Ken Hollis wrote:
which unfortunately we don't. There are many problems still to be solvedIs it a consideration to use Hydrogen Fusion instead of a chemicalIn theory, a whole lot less -- if we knew how to build fusion rockets,
rocket? With Hydrogen fusion you may need quite a bit less.
there, unless somebody comes up with a breakthrough that bypasses them.
Also, again barring breakthroughs, at least first-generation fusionrockets are likely to be large, and quite possibly will have T/W low enough
to make them useless for operating off a planetary surface.
<snip>
Quite apart from the problems radiation causes for people and electronicsand even materials, large amounts of energetic penetrating radiation imply a
massive cooling problem for fusion rockets.
There simply isn't enough fuel flow to just rely on regenerative cooling,and anything else quickly gets heavy. In one recent design sketch for a
fusion-rocket starprobe ("Firefly"), 3/4 of the mass
of the vehicle was the cooling system, which included huge carbon-carbonradiator fins running white-hot...
Henry
So, as usual, not quite so easy as the "theoretical paper" implies. Not
really surprising.
Ken
