Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6420464" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, a solar sail takes photons from a very large area, and bounces them off it's reflective surface.  In bouncing off, the photons exert a force on the sail.The sail is *huge*.  The NASA Sunjammer, which was cancelled just earlier this month, would have had a sail area of about 13,000 square feet.  It would have produced thrust about equivalent to the weight of a packet of sugar.The more you concentrate the incoming light/particles, the smaller the sail could be.  But, then, the sail has to be tough.  We aren't talking about light, now - the fusion produces helium ions and neutrons with high energy.  We can't do much with the neutrons - the're not charged, so we don't have a handle on them, and cannot easily collimate them. That leaves us with the helium nucleii.   - we are talking about charged particles moving close to the speed of light.  Individually, not a big deal.  But, in numbers and energy enough to turn a 100 MW generator?  We don't have the materials to take that hit in a small space.But.. to take the concept.... On a smaller scale - fire the beam down a long tunnel.  The tunnel is in hard vacuum, so you aren't worried about air getting in the way.  The tunnel is long enough that  the beam has spread out and isn't too harsh.  Put your particle-turbine blades down at the end of the tunnel.  You still have to deal with the fact that the things are charged - that'll cause damage long term, so maybe you have to charge the blades with electrons, which is annoying.That's why I'm thinking something more like a reverse tokamak.</blockquote>

Verification