Reply To: Fusion Oil

[zapkitty]

*sigh* 🙂

If you must insist on these multigigawatt power levels (which are overkill at the moment for anything but an non-airbreathing orbital launcher) then what you are looking for is external liquid radiators.

The liquid is sprayed directly into space in droplets or sheets and is then collected and reused. The droplets or sheet vastly expand the radiative surface for a relatively small volume and mass budget compared to a solid surfaced radiator.

These actually have had research and some testing done on them but no actual deployment in space.

(Researchers have tried to get test units aloft on the shuittle but it’s another necessary tech that NASA couldn’t quite budget for..)

http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/dropletradiator.php

… cools 37+ gwt with a “radiator” only 14326 square meters … that’s a triangle with an emitter slot 191 meters wide and a collection point 191 meters from the emitter.

Ah well… Project FOOF disdains such pie-in-the-sky fusion applications 🙂

… although FOOF would be a great place for onsite testing of LDR and LSR prototypes…