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-Z- (z@gundam.com)
Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:49:48 -0800
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gundam@1u.aeug.org [mailto:owner-gundam@1u.aeug.org]On
> Behalf Of Mark Simmons
> Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 09:21
> To: Gundam List
> Subject: Re: [gundam] Fusion Jazz
>
> Hm... okay, that's a valid point. But it could be possible to move
> large objects like asteroids using "dirty" fusion impulse thrusters. Also
> note that, in the original TV series, the engineers have to wear
> radiation suits while working on the White Base's engines. This suggests
> to me that even the Federation's newest ship uses fission or "dirty"
> fusion, rather than the "clean" helium 3-deuterium reaction.
That I can believe, but it still begs the question of why they felt the need for
Jovian He3.
> Perhaps the answer is that the Minovsky-Ionesco reactor, perfected some
> time after the great colonization rush, was the first _clean_ fusion
> reactor, replacing the bulky and dangerous ones used previously. Surely
> there has to be _some_ new feature provided by the Minovsky-Ionesco
> reactor, and if helium 3-deuterium reactions had been widely used
> beforehand, the Minovsky particle would likely have been detected a lot
> earlier. In this case, the early creation of the Jupiter fleet remains a
> nagging anachronism.
And therein lies the rub -- they must've been using He3 early on to need the
Jupiter fleet.
My take is that Lunar He3 was sufficient to supply only part of the demand,
perhaps due to the expense and difficulty of extracting it from the regolith in
any quantity, forcing them to using deuterium and tritium for the most part.
From the way the Federation traditionally operates, I'd say that He3 was
restricted to the elite on Earth, where they could justify it as being essential
to the preservation and restoration of the planet, while the Spacenoids had to
make do with d-t until they started getting He3 from Jupiter.
So Minovsky and Ionescu had to wait until the Spacenoids had sufficient
quantities for them to experiment on ways and means of making it even more
efficient. That would account for no one observing the Minovsky effect
earlier -- the people who'd've spotted it didn't have access to it in quantities
that would allow them to take a good look.
And, of course, we shouldn't overlook the obvious: the M-I compact fusion
reactor was, well, compact -- the reduction in size and mass (and, presumably,
total cost of ownership and return on investment) may have been all the
justification needed to do the research that led to Minovsky's discovery.
-Z-
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