Geez, I guess I must have sounded even more clueless than I thought :)
Believe it or not, I'm actually a grad student in physics (well, for the
time begin, anyway). I haven't had much exposure to MHD stuff in general,
and I haven't seen/done the equations on power generation from something
like this. My gut reaction was that if you're taking something like an
ion engine accelerating (say) xenon and then stripping electricity off
with a magnetic field (ie, an MHD turbine) then you had electricity to
begin with (to power your linac in the ion engine) and you probably
wouldn't pull out more than you put in to begin with...However, from what
George says this may not be an accurate picture on my part...Anyway,
thanks for all the complete answers!
Dane
[email removed]
[email removed]
TNS Stringer ------------ Terra/Solomani Rim (1827 G867975-8)
"I'm not a real Scientist, but I play one in an RPG."