Kryten

That's not an exothermic reaction. It's impossible to do and not lose energy in the process.

RTGs have been used for civilian purposes; the soviets used them to power dozens of lighthouses and navigation beacons in remote areas. However, there have been issues with these, most notably that people have stolen them and attempted to use the material for dirty bombs at least twice. I'd say that's probably the largest issue with widespread civilian RTG use; there's a lot of overlap between the properties that make material good for RTG fuel and the properties that make materials good for radiological weapons.

Part of the problem with the ISS is it's not actually a terribly good environment for a lot of these types of experiments. Doing studies on processes that are extremely sensitive to outside influences on a facility that shifts slightly every time anyone even moves inside of it is pretty difficult.

You just said that even your pet crackpots don't claim to have caused fusion reactions in light water, i.e. without deuterium.

It'd require a lot of work for USOS modules, as the massive amounts of power and data cabling between the modules would have to be reconfigured. The russians have less of an issue because their modules were all designed to form all necessary linkages without human input, necessiting fewer, simpler connections. New USOS modules would also require the kind of uncrewed rendezvous-and-docking tech the russians have, due to the shuttle retirement, which'd involve a good chunk of R and D. And, of course, there's probably the largest issue; space station modules cost a lot of money.

Pretty much everything. There's not going to be single part that doesn't have a limited lifespan, and there's effectively no way now to replace e.g. a solar panel that dies.

Tungsten is pretty heavy stuff. I'd try and see what kind of price graphite is; if it worked for the V2, it should work for yours.

Well, it doesn't, because there's no practical way it'll be exposed to neutron radiation unless it's placed close to an actual reactor. But, assuming that's what you did, transmutation into radioisotopes from neutron bombardment, as I said about two pages back.

I like how he says it's unclear the X-37 'will ever be successful'. You know, the thing that's already been launched three times.

LADEE entered lunar orbit earlier today. Yes, nearly a month after launch.

You don't think the reactor components becoming high-level radioactive waste comprises a risk?

I don't mean 'hopefully'. Have the same people that report reactions with heavy water reported reactions with light water?

Now we've acknowledged this is in fact just the same thread for the fourth time, I want to discuss something you mentioned earlier. You said that this 'fusion device' of yours works both with light and heavy water, right?

You can say 'electrode', we all know what you're trying to do. Just listen to what people actually tell you.

You can attempt to use materials that are less affected, but that's it.

Irradiation of reactor components is an issue. Neutron flux will transmutate parts of the reactor structure, making it radioactive in itself, and will also effect the lattice structure of any metals, causing potentially severe embrittlement.

Depends on the decay process. In this case, no.

As I said earlier, 1H+1H-->2H+e++Ve+0.42 MeV With the e+ promptly converting into a couple of gamma rays. However, almost every time the reaction will create a 'diproton' instead, which immediately decays back to the initial products, making it very hard to get net energy out of it. This effect is why the sun's core (in which almost all of the reactions are this one) has about the same energy output per unit mass as your average compost heap.

Particle-beam fusion usually involves proton beams (unless it's an attempt to synthesise superheavy elements), which will produce X-ray radiation upon hitting a target even if no reactions occur, due to the 'bremmstrahlung' effect. In most fusion reactions it's neutron radiation that's the issue, not gamma. The one I gave at the end of the last thread is a rather odd one, one that would be effectively impossible to do in any environment outside of the core of star, which is indeed where it happens. In terms of practical fusion reactions, the ones people tend to talk about as 'aneutronic fusion power' candidates are 1H-11B fusion and 3He-3He fusion. 3He-3He can effectively be ignored immediately due to the extreme difficulty of getting 3He in any real quantities, so most research looks at 1H-11B. However, the research hasn't come up which much good news. To give the gist of it, 1H-11B needs 10X the temperature of the 2H-3H reaction everybody usually works with, and we simply can't keep plasma of that temperature confined enough for energy-gaining fusion using any near-term technology.

If you've got light water, all you've got that can fuse (unless we're talking about condition inside stars considerably larger than our sun) is 1H. The overall equation for fusion of 1H is; 1H+1H-->2H+e++Ve+0.42 MeV Note the e+; that's a positron, aka an antielectron; it'll immediately annihilate and produce gamma radiation. Sure, you could pretend your lattice might be able to produce the energy required for fusion of oxygen, but that wouldn't stop this being more energetically viable and occurring much more often.

If there isn't any radiation, there isn't any fusion.

JM, how many of these researchers of yours have died of radiation poisoning? None of these 'reactors' I've ever seen have had any kind of shielding.

The Soviets developed a series of Ammonia/Fluorine engines for proton upper stages, but they never flew.

Unfortunately the shutdown is still threatening the other Mars mission due this year. India's Mars Orbiter Mission probe is planned to use NASA communications assets immediately after launch; if they aren't available, it can't fly.

There are major engineering issues though, including how exactly you're supposed to feed the fuel in in the first place.