Electric Steam Rocket

The Parker Solar Probe is going to visit the sun. News reports make it sound like they are going right up to the sun, but they are only expecting temperatures of 2500 degrees which doesn't sound that hot since everyone knows the sun is a zillion degree, so something is off here. Then I find that they are only going to within 8 million miles (or is it 8 diameters) of the sun. Well come on, guys, that's not really touching the sun is it? I mean 50 years ago Ray Bradbury had guys in a space ship flying right up to the sun collecting some of the sun's super-sized atoms using a super hi-tech / magical ladle.

Parker Solar Probe Trajectory

It's still closer than anyone has managed before. It's going to take them 7 years to get to the sun, which is only 8 light minutes away. Which got me to thinking that we need a faster rocket.

Rocket by Steve Bowers

One idea that's been kicked around in hard science fiction is the fusion rocket, a rocket uses the energy released by fusion to heat and expel some kind of magic propellant. The first version is probably going to use water as the propellant, with a touch of helium. In other words it's a hi-tech steam engine.

AGNI Fusion Reactor

Forbes has a story about hydrogen fusion projects in the Pacific Northwest, which is very cool. So I'm reading about all the different techniques various groups are using to try and get hydrogen atoms to fuse . . . and I'm left wondering how are they going to harness all this power if they ever do get it work? And then someone mentions heat. Heat, which is what we use coal and natural gas and uranium for. Heat that is used to heat water to make steam. Steam which is used to drive turbines that turn generators that generate electricity.

So the first step, if or when they actual get hydrogen fusion to work, would be to replace all the fuel fired boilers and nuclear reactors which fusion powered steam generators.

Is that all we can do with hydrogen fusion? Boil water? That seems, so, I dunno, archaic? Or maybe Rube Goldberg? Seems there ought to a better way to do it. I'm sure we will eventually find a better way, but right now that's all we've got, so let's see what we can do.

Paks Nuclear Power Plant generators in central Hungary
Just imagine that this is inside a space ship. Maybe it is. Maybe they just want you to think it's firmly attached to the ground here on Earth.

Another idea (my idea, I haven't seen it anywhere else, which doesn't mean much) is to use a linear accelerator to accelerate tiny sand grain sized particles of iron to some fraction of the speed of light. To create magnetic pulses powerful enough to  propel our grains of sand to relativistic speeds, we are going to need some serious electrical power. And where are we going to get that power? From steam turbines powered by hydrogen fusion!

We're going to the planets with a steam engine!