Reply To: Iconography

[Adam Whistle]

Well, yes, there is the “torchship” idea (a spaceship that has an engine with both high Isp and thrust), but a more realistic idea is to use Focus Fusion as a power plant, to power the electric or plasma engines such as VASIMR, Ion propulsion, magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, etc. Charged particles can be guided into hydrogen to get high thrust at the expense of Isp, although I fear that there may be some radiation (most likely low enough to be not more of a concern then a chemical engines exhaust).

As a curious note, space engines using fission has been planned and even tested a long time ago, called Nuclear Thermal Rocket. This scheme is fairly safe, as it only uses the heat generated by the fission reactor, and has twice the amount of Isp then what chemical rockets can possibly archive , while still having enough thrust to get out of Earth’s gravity well (especially if you put LOX into the hydrogen exhaust).