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Plasma powered spaceships?; What is there to be said about this
Topic Started: Apr 24 2008, 01:36 AM (771 Views)
Gopher_dude
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Planning World Domination
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Alright so I was watching the discoverey channel today and they were going on about "a plasma powered" jet that they thought would be a good idea to stick on a spaceship to make it go super fast.

So my question is...do you guys think plasma will be a big popular energy in the future?
You know like sci-fi, were everything is "pyu pyu, my plasma pistol!" or "voosh voosh, my plasma engine!".

Disregaurd the sound effects. They were only placed in for comediec releif.
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gay
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Earth Ending Impacter
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They're already doing that.
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Bigfoot
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The least shitty of the shittiest.
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Since Plasma is basiclly atoms without electrons, I think it's going to be expensive without a star that we "mine" for natural plasma. Remember, we don't know how to make alot of it.
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Fusion63
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Bigfoot
Apr 25 2008, 12:05 AM
Since Plasma is basiclly atoms without electrons, I think it's going to be expensive without a star that we "mine" for natural plasma. Remember, we don't know how to make alot of it.
well once we get out of the solar system we could "mine" plasma on the three stars that make up alpha centauri
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Kalkin
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I don't think plasma engine is about plasma harvested from stars. Plasma is not an element, it's a form of substance, like solid, liquid and gas are. Anything becomes plasma, when it's heated enough. I think plasma engine is about heating fuel so much that it turns to plasma and expands more (and thereby creates more thrust) than merely burning liquid into gas does. Then there's that thing about a plasma jet engine. Jet engine means it uses air combustion process. It's not usable in vacuum. I think plasma jet engine is for reaching orbit without carrying extra oxygen required by regular rocket thrusters. About 9/10 of space rocket is fuel required to reach orbit and about 2/3 of that is oxygen part. Replacing that oxygen with a plasma jet would reduce space vehicle size and thus cut expences of space travel. This is how I undestood it and it's probably doable. In my opinion the current put-spaceship-on-a-tube-filled-with-explosives-and-light-it - method of space travel is rather inefficient brute force approach and has lots of room for improvement.
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