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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by marcosdumay on Thursday February 24, 2022 @08:25AM (#30454350)
> So, to match power out, it has to be big. Really, really big.

Fusion has all of the characteristics of something you'll want to do if you are in space. Add to that the fact that its fuel is much easier to acquire than fission and that solar isn't available everywhere and you have a winner.

Meanwhile down to Earth, yes, most likely it will never be an important energy source.

Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by ncmncm on Thursday February 24, 2022 @04:48PM (#30460778)
For use in space, you need a reactor whose energy does not come out as hot neutrons. Even gamma rays would be better.

D-He3 (deuterium and synthetic helium) is attractive, except you have to make the He3 by making tritium and waiting for it to decay. pB (hydrogen and boron) is attractive, but much harder to make work than D-He3.

There is work on a D-He3 rocket, tagged "Princeton FRC", that they hope to loft for a trial maybe in 2035. Elon could get it tried out earlier, and ought to. We should be cranking tritium production up immediately so there will be enough He3 when we need that.

Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by pfdietz on Thursday February 24, 2022 @08:33AM (#30454434)
I must strongly disagree, particularly for DT fusion.

DT fusion reactors would be very heavy. ARC, for example, would have the weight of a couple of US WW2 destroyers. DT fusion delivers its energy as heat. A fission reactor would be far smaller, simpler, cheaper, and more reliable.

You might make the case for advanced fuels, but that likely means you have to get 3He from somewhere. I suspect beamed power will beat even advanced fuel fusion in all missions in the future (a weak prediction as I will not be around to see.)

Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by Paradigma11 on Thursday February 24, 2022 @08:47AM (#30454575)
But you dont need a lot of fuel for fission and you also need many other things to keep a ship/station running. Isnt fuel in the ballpark of just one of many consumables that you need?
Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by ncmncm on Thursday February 24, 2022 @04:59PM (#30460876)
Fission-powered ion propulsion is the best mature tech we have.

In space, the fission doesn't need containment, or even much shielding if it is far enough away from the rest of the ship.

In the cloud tops of Titan, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, a nuclear power plant may be as simple as a naked pile suspended near the bottom of a big fabric tube with wind turbines at the top. The radioactively-heated, buoyant air inside holds it up, and, escaping through the turbine, generates power. (Enough is held back so it stays up.)

Perhaps surprisingly, gravity is almost Earth-normal on all four planets. Perhaps more surprisingly, the temperature at a not unreasonably-high pressure is also close to Earth-normal (except on Titan). But getting back to orbit from any of the last three would be very, very difficult, so such a reactor would only ever power robots.

Getting back to orbit from Titan is easy. From Venus, it is pretty hard; and once in orbit you would need to refuel to get anywhere else.

Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by pfdietz on Friday February 25, 2022 @08:11AM (#30466848)
Titan is perhaps the best place in the solar system for nuclear energy. An open Brayton cycle system on Titan wouldn't even require a very hot reactor, when the inlet gas is dense nitrogen (mostly) at around 94 K.