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Mark Simmons (scorpio@best.com)
Fri, 17 Nov 2000 19:22:01 -0800
Dafydd writes,
>And therein lies the rub -- they must've been using He3 early on to need the
>Jupiter fleet.
Ah, but we're arguing from opposite ends here. You reckon that, since
the Jupiter fleet was founded before the introduction of the Minoveksy-
Ionesco reactor, then it wasn't the first Helium 3-based reactor. I'm
arguing that, since I believe it _was_ the first such reactor, the early
foundation of the Jupiter fleet is an error. So at least we've identified
the difference - it's a question of which factoid you value more highly,
since they do appear incompatible. :-)
There's also a potential terminology problem here. When I refer to the
"Minovsky-Ionesco reactor", I mean the one that Minovsky began developing
in UC 0047, and which subsequently provided experimental evidence for the
existence of the famous particle. Minovsky's 0071 refinement, the I-field
version, doesn't seem to have a similarly catchy name - in my Minovsky
Physics info page, I call it the "Minovsky fusion reactor." (Now that
I've barfed all this stuff up onto my site, I don't have to keep it in my
brain anymore, yay!)
>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.
The initial M-I reactor is compact because it uses helium 3 fusion
instead of "dirty" fusion - since it doesn't emit neutral particles, you
don't need to wrap it in several feet of concrete to absorb the
radiation. Minovsky's later variant is even more compact because of its
efficient I-field-based design. If helium 3 fusion were already in use
before the creation of the original M-I reactor, then what design
advantage could it have had?
Okay, back to you... :-)
-- Mark
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Mark Simmons / scorpio@best.com / http://www.gundamproject.com/
"If you can kill it, it's not a god, just a good old-fashioned monster."
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