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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 3199834" data-attributes="member: 177">I think there's far more subtlty to the possibilities than that.A good real-world fusion reactor won't eat just anything.  In the real world, details of temperature, density, and the presence of trace amounts of other materials (to act like nuclear catalysts) matter to the reaction.  Just because a given setup will fuse hydrogen into helium, does not mean it'll also fuse lithium into something else.  Even in a standard star, "hydrogen to helium" isn't the whole story.  Hydrogen has dueterium and tritium as isotopes, and they don't all have the same reaction pathway to helium.And we are talking about an engine, not a star - engines are finely tuned.  And while both gasoline and sugar will burn, you only put one of them into your car, right?  What you throw into it will at least change the efficiency of the resultSo, what happens if you throw iron into the works? Well, to a degree, this is fantasy, and what you want to happen matters most.  In the real world, it is mostly a question of engineering.  If you throw too much of anything the system isn't designed to fuse into the works, it'll choke on it.  And the results of choking may not be good for your engine.  The classic Bussard ramjet is only designed to pick up gases as fuel.  Solid chunks of matter won't be deflected enough by the magnetic funnel to make it to the intake.  And if you were to toss, say, a Volkswagon directly into the intake, I believe something breaking or going *boom!* would be in order.</blockquote>

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