The headline’s a bit misleading. The drive is a plasma thruster, and the company found that by adding Boronated water to the exhaust the plasma would fuse with some of the boron creating a kind of afterburner effect, not a sustained fusion reaction. It’s kind of interesting as a way to boost the performance of the plasma thruster, but not “OMG it’s a Fusion Drive!!!” interesting.
Yeah, that’s the fault of the article author. The actual press release uses “fusion-enhanced” which is a lot more honest.
To be fair, they’re quoting a 50% increase in thrust so it’s not completely clickbait to say “fusion powered” but it definitely does give the wrong picture.
The headline’s a bit misleading. The drive is a plasma thruster, and the company found that by adding Boronated water to the exhaust the plasma would fuse with some of the boron creating a kind of afterburner effect, not a sustained fusion reaction. It’s kind of interesting as a way to boost the performance of the plasma thruster, but not “OMG it’s a Fusion Drive!!!” interesting.
Yeah, that’s the fault of the article author. The actual press release uses “fusion-enhanced” which is a lot more honest.
To be fair, they’re quoting a 50% increase in thrust so it’s not completely clickbait to say “fusion powered” but it definitely does give the wrong picture.
Imagine all this work/research on fusion and some dudes like oh yeah my space engine does that
Fusion is easy. Getting net energy out is hard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor