Timeline for Harvesting Energy from Gas Giants
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 15, 2019 at 0:34 | comment | added | Escaped dental patient. | @ventsyv This bears little relation to the question, and really doesn't work as a frame-challenge. | |
| Sep 14, 2019 at 10:18 | comment | added | Congenital Optimist | @ventsyv I am not sure about the conventional rocket but the payload is of course very energy dense, in the order of 6 million times more so than gasoline: physics. As we harvest the tritium then we probably also have means to use it as rocket fuel. | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 18:56 | comment | added | ventsyv | @StarfishPrime Apparently on Earth, tritium is a byproduct of nuclear fission. In deep space you won't have access to refined fuel and running a fission plant is complicated business. I don't know how much tritium can you get from a gas giant, but given technology level somewhat similar to ours, getting it from somewhere else does not sound plausible. | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 18:47 | comment | added | ventsyv | @CongenitalOptimist There is abundance of hydrogen so if your spacecraft is using a ramjet engine (sucking hydrogen straight out of the air), it only needs to bring oxidizer (O2). Given Jupiter's gravity is 2.5g, and that the payload will be fairly small (10s to 100s of kilos) you'll be able to do it with conventional rocket. I have no idea if that would be economical but it's not some exuberant cost. | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 18:20 | comment | added | Starfish Prime | @CongenitalOptimist making the tritium in the first place would be a massive hassle. You certainly won't be able to harvest a whole lot of it there (or indeed, anywhere). | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 17:32 | comment | added | Congenital Optimist | Interesting if bringing tritium out from the gravity well of a gas giant would cost less energy than using it as fusion fuel would yield? | |
| Sep 13, 2019 at 17:15 | history | answered | ventsyv | CC BY-SA 4.0 |