Sounds like a Fission Fragment Engine (or Robert Forward's Fission Sail) but using decay rather than neutron triggered fission. I can't recall the idea of using extra films to capture and reuse decay products being proposed before, though.
I was wondering... Could there be a version of this that starts with mostly just safe-to-launch fertile nuclear material?
Although I think their idea relies on alpha emitters, I guess any nuclear reactions tend to produce charge particles if only through ionisation of whatever they are embedded in.I imagine something like long rolls of film stretched out by a slow rotation. They can be rolled in to soak up neutrons and then unrolled to produce some thrust and get rid of heat.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 05/25/2024 02:42 pmI was wondering... Could there be a version of this that starts with mostly just safe-to-launch fertile nuclear material?I thought the definition of fertile is that it can absorb a neutron to turn into fissile isotope. That's what Th-232 does.When it comes to nuclear decay, there doesn't seem to be any way to control that. It's just a hard physical law.