Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!sdcsvax!sdcattb!wa146
From: wa146@sdcattb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Not Ion Rockets!
Message-ID: <2626@sdcattb.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-Jun-83 11:18:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcattb.2626
Posted: Sun Jun  5 11:18:01 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jun-83 23:15:21 EDT
Lines: 14


	Ion rockets are silly!  Any halfway intelligent spacegoing
gent would use fusion power.  This would consist of a chamber with
a thrust tube leading out the back.  The hydrogen is squirted into
the chamber, confined in magnetic fields as a plasma, heated up by
a laser, and proceeds to do fusion.  When fusion happens, the reaction
is too much for the fields, which turn off, and the hydrogen blasts
out the tube.  Tadaa!!  No weakling ion rockets.  With fusion, a
little rocket will really boogie.

					Brian Sutin
					sdcsvax!sdcattb!wa146

PS Don't say this is farfetched.  Fusion will be here in 20 years.