Posted on 04/12/2024 6:45:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
:Gives a whole new meaning to 'Ruff Flight':
Bump!
“We create protons as a by-product of our Foundation thruster that are moving fast enough to induce nuclear fusion with Boron,”
I call BS.
L
I think the press release may be a bit too enthusiastic and maybe dumbed down, but turns out that is a thing, I had no idea.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=boron+fusion
Okay then. I wonder exactly how much energy is required to start the fusion of boron.
L
I’ll only buy their line once it has been demo’d in space.
Is this at Costco yet?
Pretty sure I saw one of these in the same aisle as the power washers at Harbor Freight.
It was very expensive. No worries, they have really good sales, though you have to remember it might be tough to get replacement parts since everything at Harbor Freight is made in China.
You’d have to pay to have it delivered, and it won’t be cheap. Probably costs more to deliver than their biggest safe, and they have some big ones.
bttt
I call the place ‘china freight’ and my then 9 year old asked me why in spite of the sign mentioning a harbor. I challenged her to find a product there that was not made in china. She did find a bottle of car polish (nu finish perhaps?) that was made in USA.
haha — yeah I figure it’s probably okay to buy things there that have few or no moving parts, that you can inspect beforehand, especially if you keep an eye on their sales. The rest of their more complex products (like generators) will likely be junk after they break, from lack of support.
Probably the most complicated thing i bought there was an angle grinder or a manual riveter - usually it is stuff like a soft mallet or disposables like cutting wheels.
I’ve been following aneutronic fusion for a while now.
Adding a proton to Boron eleven can get the described result of three energetic alpha particles, but getting the proton up to the required speed has been a challenge.
Boron comes in two flavors, Boron eleven and Boron ten. Boron ten has a hunger for a loose neutron and makes good shielding material, capturing the neutron and promoting itself into Boron eleven.
Boron eleven then has a hunger for a loose proton, capturing such if possible and “fusing” into carbon as described, which then gloriously disintegrates into three, (count them), alpha particles (Helium nuclei), which have tremendous momentum controllable by magnetic fields.
One problem with its being “aneutronic” however, is that a portion of the reactions, I think less than one percent, can actually spill out a neutron, which then of course gets a little messy.
There is evidence that the next step up the alpha particle assembly ladder, an isotope of nitrogen, may be able to be a bit more stable as it disintegrates into FOUR alpha particles with the addition of a single proton.
The Nitrogen isotope is somewhat rare, but Nitrogen is not.
Fusion, especially aneutronic fusion, could be very useful. Let me know how your research turns out.
Sounds like a ‘combo’ of Boron, Helium and Nitrogen is needed..................
Helium adds nothing.
Shooting a Boron eleven nucleus with a proton takes a steady eye. Putting Nitrogen up as a target might get interesting results, but the whole concept of aneutronic fusion is to break up individual atoms into what can be perceived as their constituent alpha particles.
Oops!, I meant Hydrogen.
Create a hydrogen plasma and you have a bunch of protons floating around, and at least one of them will get kidnapped by the Boron................
That’s called electrostatic fusion, and it’s what Philo Farnsworth was doing in the late sixties, and what Dr. Robert Forward spent his last days pursuing.
It’s still interesting though, and many high school kids have been doing fusion in their parent’s garage.
The most expensive part is the vacuum chamber, but I think we can salvage the concept as shown in the original post here.
Just set up the electrostatic fusion chamber as a maneuvering thruster, because outer space will provide the vacuum.
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