Project Orion

Torraway · 2005-07-27 15:32:48

I was wondering if the Orion spacecraft can be a plausible transporation systems to Mars?

http://www.angelfire.com/stars2/projectorion/

I will definitely research this further.

John Creighton · 2005-07-27 16:58:54

I was wondering if the Orion spacecraft can be a plausible transporation systems to Mars?
http://www.angelfire.com/stars2/projectorion/
I will definitely research this further.

From previous discussion the economic success of it will depend on the ability to make small nuclear bombs cheaply. It will not be economical unless it is ground launched. It will require a very large investment. It will face opposition form environmentalists and will violate many international treaties.

To go to mars with Orion means going to mars in a big way. We are talking about launching 1000 MT in one shot. This will mean either succeeding big or failing big. It will be a large investment and come at the expense of other uses for NASA dollars such as developing a reusable launch vehicle and it may mean that mars missions are launched less frequently to try to spread out the cost of building developing and launching the massive vehicle.

One obvious question comes to mind with Orion. You can use it to get a large amount of mass to earth orbit then to mars orbit. However how do you land that MASS. Landing Orion on Mars presents perhaps show stopping challenges in control systems and protecting the crew from the radiation fall out. How do you gently set something down with nuclear explosives?

yales · 2005-07-27 22:26:53

Unless you relish possible spyware, hijacking, and getting hacked,
DO NOT access the web link in the first post. It is run by this guy:

http://p068.ezboard.com/uprojectorion.bannedPage

Careful!

yale

John Creighton · 2005-07-27 23:04:28

Unless you relish possible spyware, hijacking, and getting hacked,
DO NOT access the web link in the first post. It is run by this guy:
http://p068.ezboard.com/uprojectorion.bannedPage
Careful!
yale

I hope my cookies are safe.......

Austin Stanley · 2005-07-28 01:36:37

We've talked about this ALOT before (do a quick search for Orion to see) but to me three big questions come up.

#1. Economy - Highly enriched Uranium/Plutonium is expensive, very expensive. Thus the 1000's of nuke Orion requires are not going to come cheap no matter how you manufacture them. Not to mention the expense to design and test this new class of nuclear weapon. Despite the fact that they might be of realitivly small yeild they will have to be the most precise nuclear weapons devices in history, as misfires or underfires cannot be allowed. In the end it may turn out that the Orion is not as economical as other possible lift methods.

#2. Politics - Orion, by it's very nature, is a serious violation of many political treaties. Not to mention that other nations would rightly be a little worried if some nation started mass producing thousands of new nuclear warheads and then placing them in orbit. Not to mention the enviromental actives concurns about enviromental damage.

#3. Engineering - Orion is an outragous concept, and will certianly present incredible engineering challanges, landing not the least of them. It may turn out that it is not even technicaly possible/practical.

For these 3 reasons I have to say that while Orion is a neat Idea, it's not viable in our current political enviroment.

Gennaro · 2005-07-30 14:06:24

There is no way to land an Orion since it will touch down in an a-bomb crater. Once you've ground launched it, it's an all space spacecraft. This means you'll need a fleet of subscale RLV's anyway just to refuel and restock the thing.

There is really only one use for Orions that can't be performed by other craft, ultra heavy lift (provided you think you can take the fallout).

John Creighton · 2005-07-30 15:02:49

There is no way to land an Orion since it will come down in an a-bomb crater. Once you've ground launched it, it's an all space spacecraft. This means you'll need a fleet of subscale RLV's anyway just to refuel and restock the thing.
There is really only one use for Orions that can't be performed by other craft, ultra heavy lift (provided you think you can take the fallout).

Perhaps but I like to think of how one can engineer the impossible. Perhaps you can use non nuclear explosives near the end of the landing. Perhaps the pusher plate will have enough shock absorbency so the spaceship can take a fall of a hundred meters or so or perhaps huge legs will gently touch down that extend far outside the blast zone. Perhaps the legs wouldn’t need to be able to support the full weight of the space craft but just enough weight so it can land and take off with conventional explosives instead of nuclear. I know it is not practical at the moment but thought history people have solved problems that weren’t thought practical or possible.

Fledi · 2005-07-30 15:34:48

Standard chemical explosives won't give you the energy needed, they're even less effective than normal propellants like kerosene or LH2. I've heard somewhere kerosene has 8 times the energy for the same mass as TNT.

What could be interesting is to use some sort of shock wave or laser beam to ignite small amounts of deuterium or ideally just plain normal hydrogen and use many subsequent explosions to heat and accelerate a fluid like water out of a chamber.
Something like a combustion engine, just with very small fusion explosions instead of chemicals.

But given the problems with getting fusion plants to work this technique is likely more distant in the future than other workarounds for the rocket equation.

PurduesUSAFguy · 2005-08-06 16:53:06

I think the only way you could ever make an orion system work is to use pure fusion type devices. These would lend themselves beter to the low yeilds desired by an orion and would also side step the fallout issue. Also they would be significantly cheaper, 6lithium deuteride is reletivley cheap to produce compared to highly enriched uranium or plutonium.

The problem with small fission bombs is that bellow a certain yeild you start to get significantly diminishing returns in terms of kiloton yeild per gram of fuel. The Davy Crocket was the smallest warhead produced by the United States weighed 51 pounds and used an oblique implossion configuration, which while still more efficent then gun type fission device, but no where near as efficent as the Greenhouse King configuration, which was the single most efficent fission only wahead configuration.

Now that I'm thinking about it there might have been some ultra efficent smaller fission warheads during the ivy shots, and prehaps later in Nevada after the open air test ban, but my point remains the same.

Dragoneye · 2005-08-17 14:03:42

very impractical... sure its ok for space travel but thats about it.. there are safer ways of acheiving the same goal

reddragon · 2005-08-17 16:51:04

Not to mention that other nations would rightly be a little worried if some nation started mass producing thousands of new nuclear warheads and then placing them in orbit.

On the other hand, if the US or another major nuclear power started using its bombs to propel a spaceship rather than keeping them as an ever-present danger to humanity, other nations would have little to complain about. I tend to think that Orion is rather impractical, better options for similar amounts of money and work exist, but one advantage is that it could be a way to decrease the nuclear arsenal. American and Russian bombs being used together to push humanity into space seems particularly nice.

GCNRevenger · 2005-08-17 17:19:12

The trouble is that won't work really, Orion requires very specially built warheads. You can't just take one off a missile, put a fuse on it, and throw it out the back.

John Creighton · 2005-08-17 17:26:47

The trouble is that won't work really, Orion requires very specially built warheads. You can't just take one off a missile, put a fuse on it, and throw it out the back.

Well, wouldn't that depend on just how big your Orion Space Craft is. Not saying one could be built that big for any economically reasonable amount of money but if it could. Martian Republic would be happy with all his gigantic plans.

publiusr · 2005-08-25 12:08:38

Revenger is right. The nice book (Project Orion) explains that nuclear pulse units need to be custom made--canister like nuclear shaped charges to focus a 'plate' of tungsten or plastic even at the pusher plate.

Nuclear Salt Water Rockets can give a steady 1-g thrust--but have heating issues. Compared to these challenges--Sea Dragon is easy--and gets you about as much in orbit. Questionable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html#nswr Good link
www.starshipmodeler.net (Scroll to Real Space Modeling)

John Creighton · 2005-08-25 12:25:35

Revenger is right. The nice book (Project Orion) explains that nuclear pulse units need to be custom made--canister like nuclear shaped charges to focus a 'plate' of tungsten or plastic even at the pusher plate.
Nuclear Salt Water Rockets can give a steady 1-g thrust--but have heating issues. Compared to these challenges--Sea Dragon is easy--and gets you about as much in orbit. Questionable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html#nswr Good link
www.starshipmodeler.net (Scroll to Real Space Modeling)

That is because they are not thinking big enough. If the bomb is detonated 1km bellow the ship how big can the bomb be?

publiusr · 2005-08-25 13:16:50

According to the book--an Orion that is 400 meters across--massing out to about 8 million tons (A moon base in a single shot) is possible--and would actually have little radiation--if coated in Boron.

Once again--the bomb has to be shaped. Perhaps existing nukes could be used with something large. Orion actually works better the larger it is.

I've been saying the same about rockets for years.

publiusr · 2005-09-01 11:46:31

Here is a review of a recent book on the subject:

The Orion Project in Print: A Review of George Dyson

I would recommend Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship to anyone with an interest in spaceflight. The book describes a means of propulsion by which nuclear explosions are used to hurl massively overbuilt spaceship to the heavens.

Some of these vessels could have massed out to over 10,000 tons (pp. 55, 105 and 252), and more closely resemble the gun-launched method of propulsion seen in the beginning of science-fiction. On page 59 is a quote from the author’s father: “When I thought about space travel in those days, I was thinking about the huge guns that I had read about in the stories of Jules Verne.”

Orion had widespread interest, and scientists involved had come from many different countries, like China’s Ta Li and Poland’s Stanislaw Ulam (page 93).

The early days of the space race saw the launch of the massive, three ton Sputnik III—a sizable satellite even by today’s standards (p. 182). Here the book makes a mistake in labeling kilograms as pounds.

Orion’s usefulness as apace-based ABM platform is discussed on page 210:

“It really was a much better way to do ABM, there’s no question about that.”

The project received greater attention, and a more detailed space policy study was sent to General Bernard Schriever (p.216) who proved to be no friend of the ABMA later on—in incidents not related in this book, but in another—COUNTDOWN FOR DECISION.

Early manned moon missions were suggested using “ten Atlas Centaurs in all” (p. 218).

In much the same way the Air Force pushes the EELV today, it pushed the Atlas in pre-Apollo days.

A model of the nuclear pulse Orion craft was put on display as an alternative, as explained on page 222. No photographs are available of this model, sadly—and its effect may have been negative. Smaller warheads made conventional liquid rockets smaller, which did not sit well with von Braun, who went from a competitor to a friend of the program. As it turned out, the Saturn V which could place 100 tons to orbit, could loft 400 tons to the edge of the atmosphere where the pulse drive of Orion could more safely take over. Larger Nova II boosters could even loft the key 4,000 ton Orion referenced most heavily in the book (pp. 239-241.) Should a rocket like Sea Dragon come along, perhaps Orion could live again.

Size actually worked to the benefit of Orion. The “program…worked better and better the bigger it got…and that was a novel thought to a lot of people” (pages 259-260).

In fact, on page 265 it was hinted that some obstructionism might have been due to the possibility that “some people are afraid nuclear pulse will work.”

I’m sure that Space start ups like Musk and Beal—who had all kinds of problems—would agree. On page 255, an upsurge of public support was mentioned as being a possible reason behind Orion’s secrecy.

Today (sadly) the advancement of rocketry is considered an incremental approach. As Ted Taylor—one of the key figures of the book, explained on page 273: “We must break away from the idea that we have to proceed slowly, one step at a time.”

“Orion could make all the steps at once.”

While having a great fear of space (page 95) Ted’s accomplishment as a nuclear patriot is beyond question—as was his zeal to use atomic energy for constructive purposes.

Nuclear pulse propulsion of a more limited type is being looked at by Joseph Bonometti at NASA MSFC (page 292). Johndale Solem at Los Alamos is working on a different concept called Medusa that is detailed on page 283 and 289. Scott Lowther, an aerospace researcher of some note, keeps Project Orion alive on his website www.up-ship.com

But a lot of data is still classified and in danger of being destroyed.

Orion is dying with the engineers who worked on the project. Thankfully, some are still alive. Jerry Astl, of Mar Den International Corporation still has the 1;130-scale model of Orion. Moe Scharff works for Science Applications International Corporation. Brian Dunne owns Ship Systems, based on his shaped charge work. Still, life goes on: “The last of the original group still active at Los Alamos is Harris Mayer” (p. 283.)

One wonders why Project Orion never took off. The easy answer is the anti-nuclear hysteria that took over in the ‘60’s—even among many scientists. Thankfully, such thinking is being questioned in this more conservative age.

Perhaps Orion was restricted was the threat it posed to many in industry.

To steal a quote from page 284:

“People were worried about being able to launch a thousand pound payload, and we were talking about a thousand tons!”

The real reason behind its cancellation was revealed on the same page:

“It stepped on too many toes.”

Publius

John_Frazer · 2008-01-15 21:16:06

The trouble is that won't work really, Orion requires very specially built warheads. You can't just take one off a missile, put a fuse on it, and throw it out the back.

I wasn't aware that anyone was saying any such thing. It's obvious that an industry of manufacturing and supplying the specially built "pulse unit" primaries is needed. Pu from weapons is remanufactured.

I think the discussion of a ground-launched nuclear pulse ship is wasteful (of discussion). Unless and until you can guarantee absolutely clean bombs (and even then the political will to use it will be scarce) it's irrelevant.
As well, I remember some discussion from G.Dyson's book about technical problems with the ground launch: the biggest problem, paradoxically, is what happens if a bomb doesn't go off.
Space-only use relaxes many issues: Absolutely no pollution issues, if it's fired only above the Van Allen belts. Firing rate drops to only one per 10+ seconds, maybe slower. It never made sense to me to use the same exact stage of ship for ground-space travel, as for interplanetary travel.

The way I see it, is that if you're going to get political clout to use any sort of nuclear upper stage, for a ship massing ~500 + tons, you might as well go back to the Orion 10 meter HLV sectional lifted, space assembled ship.
According to NASA Marshall, the most difficult technical problems are tossing kegs aft of the ship every twenty seconds or so, building and man-rating a system of shock absorbers on such a scale, and re-greasing the pusher plate between pulses. (If you don't agree with their appraisal, you're free to publish countervailing ideas, but you'll need to get them through the peer-review process before your objections are taken too seriously)
I do agree that the best way to use it seems to be the Mag-Orion. The mag sails need to be worked on too.
It seems as if any nuclear upper stage with even close to this kind of performance (100+km/sec delta-V, ~45% of the starting mass being payload) needs some serious breakthroughs before even getting out of the laboratory-curiosity phase of R&D.

Yes, we'll get flak about thousands of nuclear explosives in space. They're NOT weapons!, and treaties are made to be altered, especially by more than one signatory. That's the purpose of treaties.
Excessively nuclear-phobic objections don't concern me either. They're going to protest a completely peaceful multinationally approved, funded and staffed mission, which also happens to completely remove several hundred kilos of weapons-grade fissionable fuels from the planet forever??!? (I'd like to see how they spin it to get around that paradox, and it's even better since Russia and the US have decommissioned a lot of warheads, and it looks like Breeder reactors are being built, which will furnish another whole industry which produces Pu.

Concerns of landing it are irrelevant also. Again, you don't use the same ship for the two very different travel needs.
OTOH, the original ground-launch concepts sacrificed some payload, jettisoned the pusher plate & shock absorbers and empty magazines during atmosphere entry, and exposed landing legs and rockets for the landing ship. Other ships in the convoy which aren't landing, furnished ground-space craft. The landing ship set down a complete finished heavy-duty and fully provisioned research base, in one shot directly from the Earth's surface to Mars (or where ever it's going)

cIclops · 2008-01-16 03:31:46

Wow this an old thread!

The trouble is that won't work really, Orion requires very specially built warheads. You can't just take one off a missile, put a fuse on it, and throw it out the back.
I wasn't aware that anyone was saying any such thing. It's obvious that an industry of manufacturing and supplying the specially built "pulse unit" primaries is needed.

GCNRevenger hasn't appeared here for a while (anyone know where he went?) so here's a reply on his behalf:

From an earlier message:

On the other hand, if the US or another major nuclear power started using its bombs to propel a spaceship rather than keeping them as an ever-present danger to humanity, other nations would have little to complain about. I tend to think that Orion is rather impractical, better options for similar amounts of money and work exist, but one advantage is that it could be a way to decrease the nuclear arsenal. American and Russian bombs being used together to push humanity into space seems particularly nice.

So as GCN would say, read the whole topic before posting

The Orion nuclear pulse propulsion concept was further developed as Project Daedalus - fascinating work done in the 1970's.

Antius · 2008-01-16 05:16:11

Weapons grade materials are expensive compared to everyday industrial materials, but are cheap for the amount of energy that they release. Pulse units could be produced for as little as a few hundred thousand dollars each if mass produced, with perhaps a couple of hundred needed to reach orbit. The total cost of the pulse units would be in the region of $100million per launch. This sounds expensive, but when viewed in the context that each launch will lift tens or hundreds of thousands of tonnes of payload into orbit, it is actually very cheap relative to the cost of chemical rockets.

Building Orion bigger and using fusion pulse units would further reduce per unit costs and per unit radioactivity release. The cost of adding a tonne of explosive yield to a fusion device is measured in cents, not dollars! Unless and until the development of Polywell fusion, Orion remains the most cost effective means of lifting large payloads into Earth orbit at an affordable cost.

The problem of radioactivity release is best viewed in terms of cost benefit analysis. Most of us accept that road vehicle emissions are harmful to health, cause lung cancer, heart attacks and aggravate cardiovascular disease. Cars themselves inevitably cause thousands of fatalities each year as a result of road accidents. The mature way of looking at this is that we do what we can to minimise emissions and accidents, but we accept that a certain number of fatalities and injuries are unavoidable (or exceptionally difficult to avoid) as a result of using cars to get around. Given the benefits that we get from cars and given that the cost of reducing fatalities and injuries beneath a certain threshold would be excessive, we judge that the number of fatalities each year is tolerable (though never strictly acceptable), when weighed against the benefits we receive and the cost of further reduction. This is exactly the sort of trade-off that must be applied to all of the technologies that we use and the problems that we face in life. The same thought-process must be applied to the use of fossil fuels generally and their global warming potential. We accept that these fuels do cause damage through global warming and have other undesirable consequences. But we must balance the benefits we get from using these fuels against the damage that they do and the cost of NOT using them. We may decide that the consequences of using the fuels are too high and spend money reducing CO2 emissions or mitigating the consequence in some other way. In some cases, the cost of reducing CO2 emissions will be disproportionate and the benefits of using the fossil fuels very high (air travel). We may decide in this case that the risk (or damage) is As Low As Reasonable Practicable (ALARP) when weighed against the benefits that they bring us. In terms of direct risk, we each accept a 1 in 10 million chance of dying every time we step on an aircraft, in exchange for the benefit of rapid transcontinental travel. This risk translates into real fatalities in air crashes each year (including people on the ground), which we similarly accept because of the benefits that we as a society gain from air travel.

Orion should be looked at in the same way. Launching an Orion will release some radioactivity into the atmosphere. Some of this activity will reach the public and will slightly increase the amount of radiation that they receive each year (in addition to natural sources, legacy fallout and medical X-rays). This will presumably result in a small number of additional fatalities each year. The public must weigh this consequence against the benefit that they as a society receive from using Orion as a launch vehicle. If the benefits are very high (as they clearly are) and the consequences small (as they are) then we should use Orion.
We can invest money reducing the radiological consequences of Orion. We can build remote launch sites in polar regions, which will reduce the fallout over inhabited areas. We can research ways of making cleaner bombs that reduce fallout. We can consolidate launches into larger ships, which use fusion powered devices with less fallout per kg delivered to orbit. All of these things would cost money and the benefits should be weighed against the cost, just as is done for other technologies that we use.

What many greens appear to be saying is that it is totaly unacceptable to release any radioactivity for any reason. If I applied that same logic to road vehicles, I would have to ban cars all over the world because of the enormous risk that thye clearly pose. I would never be able to use electricity because of the risk of electrocution. I could never use fossil fuels because of the damage to the environment. And I could sit happy in the knowledge that I was risk-free and environmentally pure and starve and freeze to death.

Orionite · 2008-02-14 17:08:14

I was wondering if the Orion spacecraft can be a plausible transporation systems to Mars?
http://www.angelfire.com/stars2/projectorion/
I will definitely research this further.

Without question, many problems would have to be resolved before an ORION craft (nuclear propulsion via explosive nuclear devices) could be launched either from earth's surface or from orbit around earth. However, the technology is much further advanced than posts so far have reflected. The real problem is marshalling political will, not the technical side.

Actually building large numbers of nuclear devices suitable for use in ORION is not a critical issue. We already have tens of thousands of nuclear devices in the world's armories, so the expense of creating a new series of devices to launch ORION could be reduced markedly by recycling old weapons into new peaceful explosives. However, the cost of production for highly enriched fissile material is falling drastically, with new technology from improved centrifuges to atomic vapor enrichment using lasers. There will be plenty of relatively cheap fuel.

The expense or danger of testing new devices has been overstated. Today, accurate computer codes go a long way toward eliminating physical tests of the necessary devices before launch, and any such testing would be conducted in space or deep underground. This portion of the development program is unlikely to be significant. ORION's "fuel" will prove much cleaner than anyone so far has intimated.

Actual damage to the world's environment from launch of an ORION vehicle would be relatively slight. The actual damage done by all the world's atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons from 1945 to today has been negligible (discounting the actual use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at terrible cost). An ORION launch would be much cleaner than that historical program. Anti-nuclear nut cases have blown the possible environmental effects of all nuclear technology far out of proportion to actual experience.

Some form of nuclear propulsion is certain to prove a necessary component of our interplanetary program in the future. ORION offers the obvious advantage that we already know (essentially) how to do it.

I have no idea how we might contain or eliminate all the Luddites who would react to an ORION program with hysterical phobia. But we need not spend our time discussing the needs for mass public education and psychiatric aid to the distressed idiots who raise these false objections. Effort spent on further development of ORION at this stage yields valuable spin-off technology whether we ever build an ORION vehicle or not. Count on the technology to sell itself if the answers found by the scientists are sufficiently attractive.

GCNRevenger · 2008-02-14 20:02:13

My main problem with Orion is a matter of practicality... Orion's main claim to superiority is its immense launch capacity, right? As a launch vehicle for a one-shot one-time "super mission" or small collection of such missions to Mars then Orion would make practical sense (environmental hysteria and proliferation issues aside*)...

...But that isn't what we really want, what we want is to develop technology and infrastructure for a sustained flow of people and material to Mars. Jerry-rigging a low-efficiency Orion with recycled tactical nukes is still going to cost a lot of money and time for a system that we won't be able to use more than a few times without a lot of trouble.

First of all, there is no practical way for Orion ships to land, either on Earth or Mars. That means the Orion's main strength is only good once each.
Second, you cannot build a "Cape Canaveral" for Orion, simply because of the damage & fallout caused by the nukes. In order to have any real sustained program around such a massive ship, it would require some major facilities. And, while bombs can be made to generate little fallout for high-altitude airbursts, making them as clean at ground level is unlikely (neutron flux would make the soil radioactive).
Third, if the first few flights could somehow be fueled by old tactical nukes isn't impossible, but the production of new bombs for sustained operations would be far more expensive then you think. The world has, by and large, discarded its ability to construct bombs in any number, especially the high-efficiency/high-purity Pu-239 units Orions would use. This would require a very large investment in infrastructure.
Fourth, while a simple Orion would pretty difficult though not impossible, the benefits modest efficiency improvements to the design of the ship and the bombs would yield payload increases of thousands of tonnes and save hundreds of kilos of bomb-grade Plutonium. Any attempt to do anything serious on Mars would call for such improvements, the development of which would be very expensive and not good for other things.

GCNRevenger · 2008-02-14 20:28:20

*...Now for that little caveat duo:

The environmental concerns world wide are pretty minimal, but that isn't going to stop the environmental hysteria. The crazy ones are inherently unscientific, they simply will not listen. Unfortunately, as illustrated by the global warming/cooling/etc and general knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power.

Politically, Orion is a non-starter, the creation of a few bombs from existing Plutonium supplies to replace retired warheads is one thing, but creating a vast number of new tactical-sized bombs is a completely different matter regardless what they are intended for in the eyes of most nations.

There is also a serious proliferation concern, that the warheads will be so plentiful and handled by so many non-military personel that enough fuel to build one and the design at least would be much easier to steal even if the bombs themselves are taken good care of. Also, I bet the high-efficiency bombs will need Beryllium, which is nasty stuff to mess with in quantity.

And of course, the new bombs would be the ultimate weapon... high efficiency super-clean warheads, designed for use near the ground on a regular basis, simply lowers the bar between nuclear and conventional war, does it not? The warheads will even have a directed burst capability... in fact, the temptation to use them in war would probably become irresistible eventually. And one bomb leads to another, bigger bomb, and another, and another... Its just not worth it.

Instead we should spend the money developing a fully reusable spaceplane and a high-energy fission powered engine (eg GCNR or NSWR).

Terraformer · 2008-02-16 03:25:11

D-D Fusion? Would accelerating two Deutranium atoms towards each other cause them to fuse?

GCNRevenger · 2008-02-16 11:11:13

D-D Fusion? Would accelerating two Deuterium atoms towards each other cause them to fuse?

No. The energy required to blast Deuterium atoms together would likely match or exceed the energy derived from the fusion, so you wouldn't get anywhere. And even if it didn't, there is no possible way it would make much thrust since particle accelerators can't move much mass at a time.

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