On Oct 20, 7:50 pm, wrote:
On Oct 20, 10:16 pm, Damon Hill wrote:

wrote in news:1192896019.769240.164780
@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

More information on this hypthetical moonship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket

Right. Now all you have to do is actually build a gas
core engine.

Therein lies a substantial challenge.

--Damon

Correct. that's the rrub and the assumption.

However, consider that a counterflow toroidal system that treats the
flowing plasmas as a current loop with their own magnetic fields could
use combined magnetic and inertial forces to produce a rather light
weight containment with a beta ! - which has been achieved for
fusion, but when done for fissile materials result in 100 atm or more
pressure as opposed to 1/100th atm - and power densities are similarly
high.

Why not run this "Apollo Era Gas Core Nuclear Rocket Powered Moonship"
entirely through a public owned and otherwise fully tax supported
along with each of its nerd staff, on behalf of such computer wizards
utilizing any one of dozens of our spendy supercomputers, that are
fully capable of accomplishing exactly those sorts of virtual R&D as
well as delivering those absolutely spiffy Google/NOVA sorts of fully
interactive 3D animations in real time?

We used to have our national supercomputer borg like collective or
cache of "The Machine Room"(s) for accommodating just this sort of
complex task. Since we clearly own it (in many cases having paid for
several times over), why not use it?
- Brad Guth -