Reply To: EmDrive + Focus Fusion = Space Access for all?

[HermannH]

Brian H wrote:
I disagree, of course. The fundamental design of FF is to generate electricity; the heat is either icing on the cake or urine in the punch. ;-P
In general, ANYTHING above unity would do, I think. The Tokamak and similar designs project numbers in the low single digits, IIRC. They’re just heat engines, of course. Once FF attains/exceeds unity, it will attract more than money; there will be brainpower and ingenuity applied en masse to refine and maximize its output.

That’s mostly correct, the point of FF is to generate electricity directly. In order for the technology to be even theoretically viable the reaction needs to generate more electrical energy than you put in. To be economically viable you need to be quite a bit above unity as explained earlier.

Of course, once you demonstrate that you can achieve even close to unity you can attract a lot of money to develop the technology further. But this development effort may take huge amounts of money and many years before we have a system that economically produces electricity. Economically, in this case, could initially mean about the same cost as coal or regular fission not necessarily ‘too cheap to meter’.

I do hope that we get well above unity quickly and this discussion is just academic.