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My invention is an atomic rocket engine that contains a plasma
generated by radioactive metal above critical mass. It uses the heat to accelerate a liquid propellant. The energy produced gives thousands of times more thrust per pound than chemical rockets presently used and produces greater efficiency and velocity than proposed atomic rockets.
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The heat from nuclear fission is high enough to vaporize a liquid, and expand a gas, and even to convert some gases into a plasma, but it will not generate 2,000,000 pounds of thrust! Your 1000 ton vehichle will require more than that in order to achieve Earth orbit.
And although I can't find an original quote of you refering to the energy that can be obtained from chemical versus nuclear reactions, you seem to be mistaking the efficiency of nuclear processes. You refer to 100,000's to 10,000,000 times the energy in nuclear versus chemical, but you can't use a straight mass to energy calculation to determine the energy
obtainable from a nuclear process. Fission in a reactor style process is slow and only a small percent of the mass of the material is actually converted to energy. Even in a bomb style critical mass reaction you are only converting a few percent of the material's mass into energy. The fission byproducts constitute the majority of the mass and is not itself converted to energy. Even in fusion the vast majority of the mass of the fusion reactants are maintained in the fusion product.
You mentioned maintaining temperatures from the melting point of the material to that of a blue-white star, but how will you contain that heat let alone radiate it away? We have to use highly exotic materials and massive systems to generate intense magnetic fields to contain the plasma in a torus fusion reactor. You mention an engine of only a 1000 tons, but that pales in comparison to the size of the
best systems we have of containing the high temperature plasmas you seem to be contemplating.
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A means of manufacturing fuel disks from high grade radioactive metal found extra-terrestrially can be obtained by the following means. The maximum size a disk can made changes with the ratio of unstable isotopes to stable in a radioactive metal. 40% to 80% reactor grade and 80% or higher bomb grade is suitable. The actual size depends on the element and the quality available. The more unstable and heavier (Atomic Mass) the greater the heat generated by
atomic parts hitting other unstable atoms producing heat. This is best determined by experiment.
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Bomb grade radioactive material require warehouses filled with gas centrifuges and years to produce enough material for a single bomb. It is a massive undertaking and the size of the ship you are refering to could not hold that many gas centrifuges. And even then non-bomb grade material is never found in consentration, but must be concentrated from tons of ore in complex smelting processes, which is another system your ship lacks the size to hold.
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A means to protect the rocket and pay load from projectile
collisions with dust and matter it may encounter may be obtained by reducing the cross section of the craft, thereby, streamlining it. My invention may be shaped as a long cylinder to aid in streamlining. Another means of protection may be found with metals that have a shape memory effect when heated. By anticipating the collision of solid matter using conventional technology (such as radar or metal detectors), a heating electric current may be generated through the shape memory effect metal to resist the original penetration at the time of impact by the force of the spring back effect plus the thickness of the metal, thereby, creating an electric armor of my own invention.
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First, the US army is currently testing electro-magnetic armor for the next generation tank, but your design may be unique to you and I'll leave that point. The energy released from a single atom impacting you're ship will not be held off by a simple electro-magnetic shield, and the shield will not work on neutral molecular particles which also exist in in interstellar space.
The
BIG problem is that you are talking about
streamlining a vehicle designed to operate in a vacuum. The particles you encounter aren't going to pass across a streamlined surface like a car body in a wind tunnel. They're going to impact the surface of your vehicle and explode with the force of tiny atomic bombs. If you are really going to be traveling at greater than the speed of light then the impact velocity will be that high as well. Single atoms will quickly pit the surface until it loses structural integrity and grains of sand will blast fist sized holes straight through the skin at the speed you're talking about. You claim that interstellar space is virtually devoid of matter, but that's simply not true. The Sun is almost surrounded by gas clouds of varying density, there is interstellar dust, and no one, not even you, knows what the maximum mass for a non-stellar body is in the depths of interstellar space or the density of those bodies. I still find your assumptions in this regard baselss.
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Earth requires 100% containment so the harmful wastes of the 100 uncontained exhaust and any other from the conventional energy taps may be collected in a low impedance container and recycled in the propellant 2 directed at the plasma 9 where it's temperatures can' render them harmless by altering the chemical and atomic structure; thereby, decreasing the half lives of radioactive atoms to where they stabilize in an ecological short time.
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WHAT!!! Altering the atomic structure? Now your atomic rocket is capable of alchemy? Radioactive decay is not powered by any heat you can generate. It is a reaction of the weak nuclear force!