A Stunning Fusion Rocket Could Cut Interplanetary Travel in Half—and We'll Try It in Just 2 Years

Comments

• cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  No you won’t.

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  • Mihies@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    C’mon they have a video showing it! It has to be real!!!

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    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      cutting it in half… would still require a long fuckin time

      For example, when New Horizons launched back in 2006, it took the spacecraft 9.5 years to finally reach Pluto. Pulsar Fusion claims that it could cut that travel time in half.

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• Brainsploosh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Article is capped at 18 views/day so can’t see numbers.

  But theoretical cap of energy from a would be something like E_kin = (\gamma -1)mc². Witgout knowing anytging about the mission or engine, a 50 kg probe at a velocity of .9 c means an energy requirement of about 1,0e21 J.

  Fusion of H2 to H3 yields about 340e9 J/g meaning we need about 300 million kg of fuel at 100% conversion rate, or a third if we manage He3 reaction.

  Realistically heating, engine efficiency, deceleration, vibrational damping and such would probably lower efficiency to at most 40% and we end up at 750 million kg of fuel to propel a 50 kg payload.

  Seems unfeasible.

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  • i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    web.archive.org/…/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularmechan…

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    • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Still blocked, but thank you

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• gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m a little skeptical about the “10 years of absolute secrecy”… It sounds a lot like “we can’t tell you how it works, just trust us bro.”

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• i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  are these calculations correct?

  www.desmos.com/calculator/4d7lq5iazh

  Image

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  • seven_phone@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is pretty close to the first of April.

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  • jonc211@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ship gets lighter as more fuel is destroyed. Ship gets heavier as it gets closer to light speed.

    At 90% of light speed, the ship’s mass would be around 2.3x its rest mass.

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    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      the mass increase due to relativistic effects is really really small, significantly smaller than the weight loss due to fuel consumption, which btw is described by the Rocket Equation.

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• SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Will we, though?

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