Talk:Gaseous fission reactor

These reactors are also covered in nuclear thermal rocket. I think this entry is a subset of what's there, but what's there is sort of buried. Andrew 06:19, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

Thrust-to-weight
I can't see any justification for the remarks on poor thrust-to-weight for nuclear lightbulb engines and I'm removing them. The engines would be heavy compared to chemical engines but the high temperature produces extremely respectable thrust. Joffan 22:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

High temperature produces high exhaust velocity, not high thrust. Would the fuel have time to be heated enough to use the full efficiency of the fuel, while still getting high specific impulse? The highest thrust-to-weight ratio I ever heard of for the "lightbulb" was 2. EDIT: Except, that is, for the "Liberty Ship". I can't find any actual funded study justifying such high thrust. SpaceCaptain 02:49, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

reasoning of Helium-3 addition
In the text is nothing about Helium-3. High conductivity conected with high velocity of particles in plasma could be achieved as well by adition of Helium-4 or hydrogen. Moreower, Helium-3 is strong neutron absorber, which would poison the nuclear chain reaction. Because it is hard to obtain critical mass in gas core reactor because of low density of hot gas, it doesn;t make any sense to poison it even more by He-3

Limits on Isp
I thought the working temperature could be around 55000K, with specific impulse of up to 7000. Or was that concept later found to be overoptimistic? SpaceCaptain 02:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

And some sources suggest Isp up to 10000! SpaceCaptain 18:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

U vapor
Could (hypothetically) a reactor be constructed with Uranium vapor as its fuel? --WhiteDragon 19:21, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

wouldn't creating shock waves with MHD (through a subcritical gas) that collide to reach criticality before rebounding with the extra fission energy (which is then converted back to electricity with a little bit extra) be a better way of getting energy out of the system? (good design should allow 'direct' 70% conversion unless there's something I missing)