Re: Steam Powered Starships?

Michael Blair wrote:

> Steam Powered Starships?
> It seems a safe bet that the ships in Full Thrust are Fusion powered.
> The question is how do that convert heat from the reactor into
> electricity?
>

Actually if they're running fusion plants, electricity would be
generated
by MHD - Magnetohydrodynamics.	A spinning torus of plasma generates
a magnetic moving magnetic field, perpendicular to the flow of the
plasma.
Hook up some wires around it and the magnetic field will generate
current.

>The best way I know of doing this is by a steam plant as in a 20th
>century fission powered submarine. This means that a starship will have
>steam turbines and live steam lines running in the engine room.
>Emergency power might be generated by a solar boiler. A mirror array
>focuses sunlight onto water tubes, producing steam for the turbines.

Electricity generated from steam is done by using the steam to drive a
turbine
which is connected to permanent magnets which rotate, generating a
moving
magnetic field and causing current to flow in the wires surrounding the
generator.
If you run it the other way - electrical current through the wires, you
get
a motor.

The Tokamak in Japan is supposed to be a 1 gigawatt fusion reactor, if
they
can
ever get to to run for more than a few seconds, but with future
technology
I can
see room sized reactors providing Terawatts of power with relatively few
safety issues (other than the standard catastropes made possible in
handling
materials in the millions of degrees kelvin...)

--Binhan