Philospher ponders lunar 3He mining

[james_davis_nicoll]

He's agin it.

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, given lack of progress in fusion power, any near-term interstellar ship would need fission for its primary power source anyway. So then the question becomes how to turn that into thrust: ion drive, heating up gas with lasers, lightbulb... Longshot sounded like a fusion afterburner as it were, compared to just hot gas.

The logic is that we're not choosing between fission-fusion and fusion, we're choosing between fission and fission-fusion.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

The system as described has, at high Isp, far too little thrust to be useful for interstellar travel. It's even of questionable value for the outer solar system.

Interstellar travel in reasonable time requires power/mass (in the vehicle) far beyond anything we can build today.