🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <PqVNwB6w165w@tradent.wimsey.bc.ca> lord@tradent.wimsey.bc.ca (Jason Cooper) writes:
>> I don't know exactly how you will get the hydrogen to fuse in the ramjet.
>> So far that problem remains unsolved here on Earth, except for fusion
>> reactions catalyzed by atomic explosions.
>
>The H will be highly compressed by the pressures from the rest of the H 
>coming in.  It'll be blocked where it stops by magnetic fields...

Not good enough, alas.  The pressure at the *center of the Sun* produces
only the most sluggish hydrogen reaction -- one that will take billions
of years to consume the Sun's hydrogen supply.

Ordinary hydrogen burns quickly in thermonuclear reactions only under
near-supernova conditions.  The heavier isotopes used in fusion bombs
burn like gasoline by comparison, to the point where they are distinctly
rare in the universe -- even the small supply existing on Earth requires
significant effort to explain.

Building the ramscoop itself is the easy part (difficult though it is).
Getting the hydrogen to *do* something useful, once collected, is hard.
Using it as reaction mass for an antimatter-powered jet engine is going
to be much easier than trying to burn it raw.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry