| ▲ | Foskya 3 days ago |
| next step: use nukes as an energy source |
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| ▲ | DennisP 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Check out this 1970s project that proposed extracting electricity from thermonuclear explosions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER > A series of 50-kiloton bombs would be dropped into the cavern and exploded to heat the water and create steam. The steam would then power a secondary cooling loop for power extraction using a steam turbine. Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power |
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| ▲ | euroderf 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Coming soon: thermonuclear fracking. | | | |
| ▲ | jandrese 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Hey boss, do you think there is a chance this scheme might introduce radioactive byproducts into the ground water?" "Shut up" | | |
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| ▲ | drivebyhooting an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For some reason (that I haven’t figured out yet) thermonuclear bombs are just so much more efficient than any other proposed fission or fusion reaction. It’s strange that controlled fusion is an energy sink, but whatever black magic is happening inside an H-bomb manages to unlock so much “free” energy. |
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| ▲ | dopa42365 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Even the cleanest bombs (97%+ fusion rather than fission) turned out to be too dirty for basically everything civilian (unlocking gas reservoirs - too radioactive; landscaping to replace enormous amounts of conventional explosives - too radioactive). | |
| ▲ | hallgrim an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not really? How do you define efficiency here? Thermonuclear bombs literally create lots of heat, and don’t tend to drive anything that produces work. It’s the opposite of efficient. Just like lighting gasoline on fire and claiming that that’s more efficient than a combustion energy… | | | |
| ▲ | Izikiel43 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | In order to trigger an H bomb, you first trigger a regular fission bomb to generate the necessary energy to trigger the second fusion stage. So, fission bombs are the black magic. |
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| ▲ | antonvs 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Some of the nuclear rocket propulsion ideas propose exactly that, like Project Orion. |
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| ▲ | HPsquared 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Fission fragment rocket engines are also (theoretically) extremely efficient.. using the particles that come out of the reaction directly as a high-velocity exhaust stream. | | |
| ▲ | drivebyhooting an hour ago | parent [-] | | FFR have super high ISP but microscopic thrust. Not exactly practical. | | |
| ▲ | db48x 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Practical for many missions, just not for sending humans in person to other planets. For example, consider a mission to deliver a telescope out past 550AU so that it can use the whole sun as a gravitational lens. That’s more than 11× further than Pluto, but a fission fragment drive could get the telescope out there in about the amount of time it took New Horizons to fly past Pluto. |
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| ▲ | hedgehog 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you like Orion check out Project Pluto (they even built some some test bench engines) | |
| ▲ | Izikiel43 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | did they ever figure out how to brake? Spin the ship 180 degrees and bomb the front? |
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