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Pooka🍸Boo 👁🫣🫵 (lednabm@stranger.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-May-2024 00:13:43 JST Pooka🍸Boo 👁🫣🫵

Can you imagine what essentially is a miniature-sized fusion explosion funneled out of a nozzle.... 😎
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/nasa_plasma_propulsion/
In conversation about a year ago from stranger.social permalink
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  NASA plasma propulsion project promises Mars in a flash
  
  System would also make it easier to transport much heavier spacecraft
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  Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@spacey.space)'s status on Saturday, 04-May-2024 00:13:40 JST Isaac Ji Kuo
  in reply to
  - Dan Lyke
  @danlyke @lednaBM
  So, even when, say, a Z-pinch experimental facility is unable to produce conditions suitable for practical fusion power, it still provides data on a way to compress and heat plasma to extreme temperatures.
  That's data that someone can take and use to design a plasma thruster. No need to achieve fusion, just need to heat it up and let it escape out a nozzle.
  
  In conversation about a year ago permalink
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  Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@spacey.space)'s status on Saturday, 04-May-2024 00:13:41 JST Isaac Ji Kuo
  in reply to
  - Dan Lyke
  @danlyke @lednaBM
  We've come a long way in terms of more sophisticated variant concepts from Orion ... mini-mag Orion ... anti-matter catalyzed micro fission ... all sorts of ideas. Heck, there are even non-nuclear variants using kinetic impact powered explosions rather than nuclear powered.
  Ironically a lot of these advances in ideas come from fusion research, rather than fission research. Fusion research gives us experimental data on magnetic plasma containment, plasma compression etc...
  
  In conversation about a year ago permalink
  
  GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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  Dan Lyke (danlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host)'s status on Saturday, 04-May-2024 00:13:43 JST Dan Lyke
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  @lednaBM every generation has to reinvent Project Orion for itself.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
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    Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
    
    Project Orion was a study conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA, and NASA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft. Early versions of the vehicle were proposed to take off from the ground; later versions were presented for use only in space. The design effort took place at General Atomics in San Diego, and supporters included Wernher von Braun, who issued a white paper advocating the idea. Non-nuclear tests were conducted with models, but the project was eventually abandoned for several reasons, including the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear explosions in space, and concerns over nuclear fallout. Physicist Stanislaw Ulam proposed the general idea of nuclear pulse propulsion in 1946, and preliminary calculations were made by Frederick Reines and Ulam in a Los Alamos memorandum dated 1947. In August 1955, Ulam co-authored a classified paper proposing the use of nuclear fission bombs, "ejected and detonated at a considerable...

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