🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BvE2yD.2M3@wm.estec.esa.nl> pisherwo@wm.estec.esa.nl writes:
>Might it be possible to set a fusion chain reaction in Jupiter's atmosphere
>if a big enough fusion bomb were used as an initiator ? 

Perhaps possible, but inordinately difficult.  I don't think fusion-bomb
temperatures would be enough.  Fusion of ordinary hydrogen is very, very,
very, very, very slow.  The Sun is billions of years old and has burned
only a small fraction of its hydrogen.

>I believe there were some worries about 'igniting the atmosphere' at
>the time of the first H-bomb test. This didn't occur because our
>atmosphere has a low H content...

Actually, it didn't occur because the temperatures were nowhere near
what would be necessary.  Oxygen and nitrogen fuse just fine if you get
them hot enough.  (Only the largest stars ever manage this at all.)

Materials like lithium deuteride are expensive to make and troublesome
to handle.  If it was easy to fuse ordinary hydrogen, that's what the
bombs would use.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry