Monday, February 7, 2011

Dense Plasma Focus revisited

I knew I got the idea from somewhere.  It appears that I got the idea of using this as propulsion from watching the video I posted here previously.  Now, let's look at some screen shots of this video in order to show what I saw ( or think I saw).

The top video screen shot is of a "powerful" beam emanating from the plasmoid inside the electrode pictured.
The two pics below are of the plasmoid, with two beams of opposite electrical charge which emanate from the plasmoid in opposite directions.

Focus Fusion Society
The bottom pic here shows a positively charged beam emanating from the plasmoid where the fusion has taken place.  Now, the thing I saw was that this positively charged beam can possibly be utilized as a reaction mass for thrust.  It would have velocity and mass.  The electrons wouldn't have much mass and couldn't supply much in the way of mass, but the postively charged ions could.

Now if you could fire enough of these beams out the back of a nozzle and do it concurrently with producing energy from fusion, the yield in thrust might be sufficient to propel a spacecraft.  (That is the idea I got from this)  The video said the beam lasts " a few millionnths of a second".  If you had sufficient number of these electrodes which ionize the hydrogen and create the plasmoids where the fusion takes place, you could possibly have a continuous firing without melting the electrodes.  If so, it is a question of how much matter gets expelled and its velocity in determining thrust.  My hunch is that it may be of sufficient velocity and mass that it can be useful for thrust.

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