this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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204
World’s 1st nuclear fusion-powered electric propulsion drive unveiled - Interesting Engineering (interestingengineering.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 170 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The headline’s a bit misleading. The drive is a plasma thruster, and the company found that by adding Boronated water to the exhaust the plasma would fuse with some of the boron creating a kind of afterburner effect, not a sustained fusion reaction. It’s kind of interesting as a way to boost the performance of the plasma thruster, but not “OMG it’s a Fusion Drive!!!” interesting.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 7 months ago

Yeah, that's the fault of the article author. The actual press release uses "fusion-enhanced" which is a lot more honest.

To be fair, they're quoting a 50% increase in thrust so it's not completely clickbait to say "fusion powered" but it definitely does give the wrong picture.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Imagine all this work/research on fusion and some dudes like oh yeah my space engine does that

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fusion is easy. Getting net energy out is hard.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Wasn't there an rocket concept like that from the 70's, using the freed electrons for containement or something? I saw it once on Wikipedia and then never found it again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There has been some fusor research going on for decades. The issue that killed that direction of fusion research was ultimately that the electrons do not behave as the initial simple models suggested and in the real world the power loss from the fast electrons is just too big for any reasonably sized device to allow for self sustaining fusion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Basically this. Look at all the big fusion reactor projects - they've been going for decades and JUST NOW hit a very miniscule amount of net output within the past several months.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But do they stack in my inventory?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Only the small grid version, which we haven’t unlocked yet

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago

The first step in designing a fusion reactor is picking where to hide the power source

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

This is actual snake oil

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What the fuck kind of snakes do you have living around you?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Nuclear snakes

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Pritchard?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

O.o

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Not exactly inspiring any confidence trying to pass that AI-generated monstrosity as a photo of the device.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

What is this cube and how does it relate to the drive?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When you plug two of them into each other it goes twice as fast.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

And 3 to make a sun into a torus.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

That’s what it looks like when it’s about 50% complete. At that point you need like 2000 steel plates and it’s a pretty slow grind.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Minecraft command block?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I beg to differ. I present - the Ford Nucleon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This was a concept. The linked article claims demonstration. Big difference.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

It was a joke. WTF