Efficiency of Fusion

A thread of 2 messages, 18 November 1990 to 19 November 1990, in the order they were sent.

#1804 Efficiency of Fusion

Orcinus orca · 18 November 1990

Tim Day writes:
> [can't fuse 4 Hydrogen to get one Helium]

That's what I thought, until I added the mass of 4 Hydrogen atoms
and found it to be greater than the mass of one Helium atom.  THinking
about it, a single hydrogen atom could be converted into a neutron
(neutron = proton + electron), so on paper, you could get a helium
atom from 4 hydrogen atoms.  I doubt it's so in real life.

There are a lot of other things involved (like neutrinos and such)
which I'm no guru on, so could some physics guru take over from here?
And I never expected my result to be the final word.  It was just a
ballpark estimate.

And as for "this thread is silly, Traveller is supposed to be fun":
There are some of us who think that trying to explain Traveller rules
in terms of real life lots of fun.  Oh yeah, if relativity is having
problems explaining jump drives, change relativity.  I'm sure Einstein
never intended relativity to account for *everything* in the universe.
- - --
John H. Kim
[email removed]
[email removed]

#1811 Re: Efficiency of Fusion

Tim Day · 19 November 1990 · reply to #1804

Robert P Poole [email removed] writes:
> Since when is it graven in stone that ordinary Hydrogen doesn't
> work in fusion?

Oops.  I checked.  There are fusion chains in which a proton decays to
give a neutron.  But the isotope reactions are a couple of orders
of magnitude more efficient, according to the ``Spaceflight Handbook''.
I also remember that the plans for BIS's Deadulus probe (to Barnard's Star)
called for fusion fuel pellets primarily of deuterium/tritium.  More
tomorrow (and hopefully some numbers).