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Friendly Lunatic

Suicidesoldier#1
MachineMuse
Suicidesoldier#1
Yeah, but if it could start as a catalyst that would be awesome. : P

But if it's unnecessary... :/


Well, the issue being, is it easier to start, lower temperatures etc. even if lower energy gains.

The difficulty of initiating hydrogen fusion with lasers is so extreme it would be great if other options were available. xp

It isn't. That's the whole point. Hydrogen is the cheapest one to start.

Fanatical Zealot

MachineMuse
Suicidesoldier#1
MachineMuse
Suicidesoldier#1
Yeah, but if it could start as a catalyst that would be awesome. : P

But if it's unnecessary... :/


Well, the issue being, is it easier to start, lower temperatures etc. even if lower energy gains.

The difficulty of initiating hydrogen fusion with lasers is so extreme it would be great if other options were available. xp

It isn't. That's the whole point. Hydrogen is the cheapest one to start.


Herm... but even if the energy is higher, are there are factors that are better? xp

Friendly Lunatic

Suicidesoldier#1
MachineMuse
Suicidesoldier#1
MachineMuse
Suicidesoldier#1
Yeah, but if it could start as a catalyst that would be awesome. : P

But if it's unnecessary... :/


Well, the issue being, is it easier to start, lower temperatures etc. even if lower energy gains.

The difficulty of initiating hydrogen fusion with lasers is so extreme it would be great if other options were available. xp

It isn't. That's the whole point. Hydrogen is the cheapest one to start.


Herm... but even if the energy is higher, are there are factors that are better? xp

Why are you so intent on this?

No. The only reason to use higher elements would be if you had a limited supply of hydrogen and needed to get the most energy you could out of a small amount of fuel.
There's a reason stars die when they're full of iron. Fusing iron or any heavier element requires more energy than you get out of it. Hence why we can generate energy by nuclear fission. The heavier the element the more energy it takes to fuse and the less energy you get out of it, so there's really no practical reason to fuse anything other than hydrogen, especially considering how abundant it is.

Edit: Well, there is one reason. Since they produce less power they're slightly more manageable. While it takes more energy to cause the actual fusion, it takes less energy to contain it.

Fanatical Zealot

IronySandwich
There's a reason stars die when they're full of iron. Fusing iron or any heavier element requires more energy than you get out of it. Hence why we can generate energy by nuclear fission. The heavier the element the more energy it takes to fuse and the less energy you get out of it, so there's really no practical reason to fuse anything other than hydrogen, especially considering how abundant it is.

Edit: Well, there is one reason. Since they produce less power they're slightly more manageable. While it takes more energy to cause the actual fusion, it takes less energy to contain it.


Herm... which does seem to be an issue...

Although starting it would be crazy hard.


But on the matter of energy we're trying to say, use giant lasers that can shoot out 10 times their power 15 times a second for over a minute to initiate fusion when it can barely get off one shot.

What if we could, idk, say use heat or something as a catalyst in one of those? xp
The only way I know of to "catalyze" fusion reactions is to replace electrons with muons, which are ~209 times heavier, and make the atoms smaller, easier to fuse.

Unfortunately muons decay pretty rapidly, so it's kinda hard to use them unless you're going to be accelerating which comes with it's own costs...

Fanatical Zealot

Well once we've got one fusion reactor going we can use it to make others and then if one goes out, use one of the say, 100 things we've got going to restart it.

All we have to do is get it going one time and we can make more etc.

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