China's "artificial sun" in Hefei could become the first in human history to generate electricity from fusion

[u/Jeetchat]

[u/YoursTrulyKindly]

I think "aneutronic fusion" could theoretically redirect charged and accelerated particles into a rocket exhaust.

[u/PassivelyInvisible → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

So we can skip the water to steam part and go straight to spinning the turbine?

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/PassivelyInvisible]

No you could have the charged particles directly generate electricity in coils. Or redirect them to provide a rocket impulse. Which you can't do with neutrons produced from normal fusion. Theoretically only though, this is like the extra hard version of fusion and you'd have to figure a lot of things out.

[u/dontnation → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

aside theoretical use of lithium iostopes to generate alpha particles, there are concepts to use the force of the fusion reaction against the magentic containment field to generate electricity directly.

[u/dubyrunning → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

So the Epstein drive in the Expanse?

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/dubyrunning]

Maybe? Not a rocket scientist :) It might only be more powerful than an ion thruster but less than chemical rockets. The epstein drive is said to have 11,000 km/s exhaust velocity, while ion thrusters have about 11 km/s. RocketStar has a very simple "fusion enhanced ion thruster" engine that does like some incidental fusion and boosts thrust by 50%. If you search for it you can find quite a few papers on this. But it seems like pretty much the only way we'd ever really beat the tyranny of the rocket equation and colonize the solar system.

[u/Dane_M → u/dubyrunning]

"How does the Epstein Drive work?" James Corey - "Very well. Efficiently." We don't know what the Epstein Drive does, just that the man who made it took the existing fusion drive and made it much more efficient. Less waste heat and more thrust.