Re: How to get Post-Scarcity?

On Jun 27, 7:59 am, CharlesRCap...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jun 26, 3:09 pm, Luke Campbell <lwc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I could suspend my disbelief of nuclear transmutation for the sake of
a good story, but it really isn't plausible with any foreseeable
technology.

What about a fusion torch? Drop some trash into the hopper and the
fusion torch atomizes it and you get a cloud of really hot atoms on
the other side.

Again, I could suspend my disbelief for the sake of a good story, but
this still isn't plausible. Not with fusion. The cross sections for
nuclear interaction are too low and the Coulomb barriers too high.
Something like monopole catalyzed baryon decay would be an easier pill
to swallow - it is predicted theoretically and all you need is some
monopoles.

Unless you are talking about using the standard exotic H/He/Li/B
isotopes for the fusion, but using the trash for reaction mass only.
In this case, it could be plausible for some kinds of propulsion, say
fusion micropulse propulsion. A properly designed spacecraft would
probably be using hydrogen for propellant rather than just any old
trash, but in an emergency I could see the intrepid engineer rigging
up a system to use asteroid dust or some such to get them back home -
assuming they still have the fusion pulse units. Antimatter triggered
microfission-fusion pulse drives are also in this general realm of
plausibility.

Luke

.