this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Cool! But, uh, don’t they need to build a working fusion reactor before they build the ship? The ship kind of seems like the easy part, tbh.
The article's really light on the details, but it's quite possible that it's easier to build a fusion rocket than it is to build a fusion reactor. With a fusion rocket you're letting the fusion plasma blow out the end rather than trying to keep it contained, and you're not trying to extract electricity from it.
In theory, we've been able to build a "fusion rocket" for decades already - check out Project Orion for a particularly badass form of propulsion that is sadly now prohibited by international treaty (and also by the fact that it'd probably fry half the satellites currently in orbit if we tried launching the thing from near Earth's vicinity).
What do you mean by "fusion rocket" and "able"?
By "fusion rocket", I mean a rocket that's powered by fusion reactions. Specifically fusion bombs. Project Orion was a proposal to build a rocket that had a plate mounted underneath it on shock absorbers, that would fire fusion bombs underneath it and be propelled by their detonations.
By "able" I mean we could build one right now if we wanted to. We have all the technology necessary, we've been building and detonating fusion bombs for 70 years now.
Have a look at the link, it's got lots of details.
Has there been any working practical application of fusion bomb propulsion? I'll admit I didn't read all of it but from what I could tell there were only plans on building something but nothing ever came of it
In my original comment I mentioned the two main reasons why nothing ever came of it - the nuclear test ban treaty, and the destructive EMP and charged particle environment that would result from setting off those nuclear detonations in Earth orbit. Neither of these are technical limitations on the vehicle itself, though. If the treaty didn't exist and we didn't care about frying satellites we could build and launch one with the tech we already have today. But since those two limitations do exist nobody's exploring it further right now.