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Post by overloaderdave on Aug 2, 2017 17:13:08 GMT
Nuclear salt water reactors are weak, for we must embrace the power that is uranium-233 dissolved into lithium kept at roughly 1500K. Lithium is lighter than saltwater; this mixture, once created, will quickly superheat and go supercritical. Mix in a bit of lithium deuteride (also soluble in lithium) for a bit of fusion boost and you're cooking with thermonuclear fire.
Alternatively, dump the lithium solvent and go pure power: use uranium tetrabromide or hexafluoride. Start at first with pure uranium, until you have a stable fission, then start to inject lithium deuteride. Once you have good fusion, lower the input of uranium, until you have mostly lithium deuteride being injected. You have now fried your entire ship by making a continuous nuclear bomb behind you.
The only question is: how viable would such a ridiculous rocket design be?
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Rorie
New Member
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Post by Rorie on Aug 2, 2017 18:17:20 GMT
Nuclear salt water reactors are weak, for we must embrace the power that is uranium-233 dissolved into lithium kept at roughly 1500K. Lithium is lighter than saltwater; this mixture, once created, will quickly superheat and go supercritical. Mix in a bit of lithium deuteride (also soluble in lithium) for a bit of fusion boost and you're cooking with thermonuclear fire. Alternatively, dump the lithium solvent and go pure power: use uranium tetrabromide or hexafluoride. Start at first with pure uranium, until you have a stable fission, then start to inject lithium deuteride. Once you have good fusion, lower the input of uranium, until you have mostly lithium deuteride being injected. You have now fried your entire ship by making a continuous nuclear bomb behind you. The only question is: how viable would such a ridiculous rocket design be? I have no idea how viable it would be. But I assume that it would be ridiculously expensive. Unless you have some magical device that pumps out lithium deuteride and Uranium tetrabromide/hexafluoride. |
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Post by overloaderdave on Aug 2, 2017 18:33:06 GMT
well of course it'd be ridiculously expensive, but it would also be a cheaper torch drive than other forms and at least somewhat possible
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 2, 2017 23:01:40 GMT
Nuclear Salted Lithium Rocket.
I wonder how energetic this kind of thing would be, and how ridiculously expensive and wasteful it'd be to waste something that can only be created by the big bang and particle accelerators into space.
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Post by n2maniac on Aug 3, 2017 4:49:39 GMT
Fission requires active control to keep it critical and avoid both prompt criticality and sub criticality/poisoned by neutron poisons. If your suggestion is to control this simply by letting it burn off excess uranium above criticality and/or have fusion going continuously in this, keep in mind that both a nuclear bomb and plasma at fusion temperatures tends to blow itself apart effectively. In short: it would be exceedingly difficult to get this to continuously burn without a control rod-like mechanism (and, if used as a gas or with fusion, confinement pressure).
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Post by apophys on Aug 3, 2017 7:18:42 GMT
Nuclear Salted Lithium Rocket. The acronym devised on the Discord channel was Thermonuclear Lithium Deuteride Rocket (TLDR).  |
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Post by matterbeam on Aug 3, 2017 17:10:48 GMT
Nuclear Salted Lithium Rocket. The acronym devised on the Discord channel was Thermonuclear Lithium Deuteride Rocket (TLDR). There's a Discord channel? |
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 3, 2017 17:39:46 GMT
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