Fusion Ignition Idea

[dean_mcgowan]

Hi All

Are there any astrophysicists budding or otherwise that could comment on the idea of using a device that could travel close enough to the sun
to make use of the energy emitted to initiate a controlled fusion reaction without being destroyed in the process.

Cheers,
Dean

[mr_bojangles]

hmm

the main issue with having a generator type machine in space (i.e. out of earths gravitational field) is finding an effective way to store energy on the craft itself, this adds weight and more mass to be moved, taking more fuel etc.

then youd have the issue of getting it close enough to the sun, taking more energy

another issue would be extraction of the energy stored in the craft itself

it would have to return to earth, or another craft would have to dock and take the energy

so you now have the energy put into both crafts in  attempt to use the energy you generated

the retrieval craft would have to have the same storage mechanism as well that would add mass

the problems again being the large amount of energy it takes to get to a point where generation begins


those are my initial thoughts, im always intrigued by ideas that dont take place on earth, because so far no idea on earth has worked

as for fusion, if there was a mechanism close enough to the sun there might be a chance to obtain it

i would doubt it would be able to be used too many times


if your going for a fusion type reactor maybe look into Helium 3

obviously the only way to achieve it is from other reactors which is rare, but there is an abundant source on the moon


i remember hearing something from a documentary about it

"even if there were bricks of gold on the moon, the fuel alone to bring them back would cost more than the gold itself"



until next time

[d3adp00l]

materials to do that doesn't exist, it would have to have an inverted tokomak magnetic shield, say it had such a thing, and had the onboard power to power it up before it got to close to the sun. now your generating power right, Well getting it back to earth wouldnt be that easy. The ship would have to have enough fuel (lets say ion metalic magnetic drive) to maintain an orbit that would match the rpm of the earths rotation. lets say you have that, now you have to have a satelite that says on the sun side of the earth in sync orbit. once that is done you could beam the power from the ship to the satelite and then beam it onto earth. A mazer (microwave laser) you could beam the power from point to point fairly efficeintly.

But why bother with running a fusion reaction when you have one there in front of you to use, use a heat exchanging power system to pull power from the fusion of the sun.

but that is a really complex system to get power. We can get power here much easier if the businesses would change their practices, to fair and reasonable margine theory, instead of profit maximization theory.

[Xaverius]

Actually, Protium-Protium fusion is already a viable option.  It is already being used (in a modified form) in neutron generators, which have been around for at least a half century, although this particular method is somewhat inefficient.  The amount of energy produced is 50% more than the energy used to create it.  The main problem is finding a method of focusing the beams tight enough to obtain collisions.  This should be possible to overcome, afterall, electrons have been focused to strike targets in CRTs for nearly 80 years.  The government and scientific community has been wasting billions of dollars to reproduce the interior of the sun, on earth, for the past half century.  What is needed is R&D for Proton particle acceleration/collision.

[d3adp00l]

nuetrons are charge neutral which makes controlling them a bit harder than a negativity charged particle which can be enacted upon by magnetism.

On top of that, Neutrons are bad hmm kay, high energy neutrons are gamma rays, the whole point is to reduce the likelyhood of killig people while running the reactor.

Besides that, protium has no nuetrons to be used in a neutron generator, and getting it to fuse is not a viable option. The sun uses massive amounts of gravity to create and sustain that reaction, we can not create eough mag field to induce such a reaction which is why they use dueterium and tritium, but that gives us the nuetron problem I mentioned before.

There is an answer to this issue, in theory.