On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Sander Pool wrote:
> an article that described a plan to freeze a big ball of hydrogen at Jupiter
> and attach it to a ship that would use it for fuel. Or perhaps it was
> deuterium so they could use fusion...
Deuterium, as I recall. That's an Enzmann starship. Unfortunately, that
design doesn't work: solid hydrogen/deuterium is the prime example of an
ice which is *not* physically strong. (It has roughly the consistency of
warm butter.) Enzmann apparently didn't know that.
(For quite fundamental reasons, hydrogen essentially acts as if it was
considerably warmer than it is. Liquid hydrogen is halfway to being a
gas: light, quite compressible, very low viscosity -- less than that of
room-temperature air! -- and easily boiled. And solid hydrogen is halfway
to being a liquid: soft, amorphous, and easily melted.)
Henry Spencer
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