Standing Bear wrote:
<snip>
>
> I see no sufficiently efficient
> > process for extracting that energy directly from the plasma.
>
> {How about using that plasma in Dr. Marchese's Black Light Rocket
> and revolutionize space travel!} ...already a NIAC funded study once...
> Standing Bear just an observation
Unfortunately, the Phase 1 study did not quite verify that high velocity
gases were coming downstram from the reactor; there were instrumentation
difficulties and the fund ran out before they could do a test of a nozzle
into a vacuum chamber with sensitive force measurements. Phase 2 was not
funded, so it remains a speculation. In any case it would have been useful
only as a deep space thruster for which high thrust is less an issue that
high specific impulse, which translates directly into on-board mass.
BLP has posted papers about gyrotrons and MHD configurations. Gyrotrons are
efficient converters of electron kinetic energy to microwave oscillation,
but they are hard vacuum devices requiring a long mean free path. That is
incompatable with a plasma at the other end of the tube. An MHD device
expels an ionized gas through a magnetic field, producing a voltage drop.
Such spends the fuel and the catalyst; perhaps such a device could work with
water as fuel and catalyst.
Mike Carrell
