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World’s 1st nuclear fusion-powered electric propulsion drive unveiled - Interesting Engineering
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Imagine all this work/research on fusion and some dudes like oh yeah my space engine does that
Fusion is easy. Getting net energy out is hard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
Wasn't there an rocket concept like that from the 70's, using the freed electrons for containement or something? I saw it once on Wikipedia and then never found it again.
There has been some fusor research going on for decades. The issue that killed that direction of fusion research was ultimately that the electrons do not behave as the initial simple models suggested and in the real world the power loss from the fast electrons is just too big for any reasonably sized device to allow for self sustaining fusion.
Basically this. Look at all the big fusion reactor projects - they've been going for decades and JUST NOW hit a very miniscule amount of net output within the past several months.