Lennart Thornros <lenn...@thornros.com> wrote:
> If he can produce electricity why is a jet engine implausible? > It is implausible at this stage because jet engines require extremely high temperatures and power density -- much more than any other application. It take 10 or 20 years to develop a new jet engine, compared to only ~2 to ~5 years for an internal combustion engine or a generator (depending on the size of the machine). The other reason this is unlikely is that aerospace engines and other aerospace components such as radar are the most safety critical and expensive machines on earth. They are the last thing you develop, not the first. A jet engine failure can easily become catastrophic in a way that no automotive or marine engine would be. If cold fusion pans out I am sure that various aerospace engines will be developed, but they will be the last thing people develop, not among the first. They will be developed after many decades when the technology is mature and billions of other machines have been manufactured and run for billions of years cumulatively, making reliability as high as it is for today's liquid fuel heat engines. Near term aerospace applications might include propeller engines for drones, cold fusion electric power supplies, and synthetic liquid fuel made with cold fusion energy, which would lower the cost of air transportation. - Jed
