Once again proving this is one of the most underrated channels of all time. Thanks for all you do Fraser and Universe Today team! And of course the researchers and everyone involved at NASA etc
It is not cold fusion or the ponds-fleisch experiment as many comments are saying. The researchers could have done a better job explaining it but if you google lattice confinement fusion you will find the details (mentioned in the video but easy to miss). My own short explanation is that although deuterium gets confined inside of a metal lattice, unlike in cold fusion it also gets bombarded with gamma rays tuned to be adsorbed by deuterium giving the particular atom that adsorbs it very high energies and being confined near other deuterium atoms the likelihood of fusion is high. Also the fusion is not there to produce net energy (this kind of fusion has been shown to happen without net energy production) but to produce neutrons that are used to cause fission in a controlled way. That is very cool because you can use fissile materials that won't sustain a chain reaction or at masses that won't. As they mentioned it also allows using safer and cheaper fuels like thorium and it would also allow "burning" that fuel way more completely than a regular nuclear fission reactor. It should also be extremely throtleable and could be almost completely off during the travel time which is quite useful for this application: Off during travel, max throttle while melting through the ice and a low setting once down there to just power the instruments and communications for longer. I really hope they succeed, cant wait to see the Europa space wales.
@@unvergebeneid They did mention it but briefly at the beginning and then later too giving a bit more of detail but without really insisting on it. If you blink you miss the mentions of fission so missing it is understandable.
So as it melts it's easy down, a communication cable spools out behind. Then on the surface there's some communication equipment. The cable itself has to be robust against cold temperatures and high pressures and perhaps also shifting ice. Unless it sends some kind of a radio signal directly through the ice.
Lattice confinement fusion should be getting researched and developed for here on an energy hungry earth as well . ITER looks like it'll be at least 60 years away before it's commercially developed. They both might never work commercially but 1 might and 1 might not.
I could neither extract from the interview, what the state of the project is, nor what stage they are really working on, nor if any (or which) of the basics have already been demonstrated to work . Are they doing experimental work at all, or is that all about theoretical physics? Was all of that speculation about applications of a technology, which does not exist? What does "get a design established" mean here? A design for a proof of principle? A design for a useful system of something, that has allready been demonstrated (Where, when? Was it mentioned somewhere in the interview and I just did not get it?) to work in general? A design to implement a device the size of a teapot, which is just assumed to have the required power output for a melting probe? And if they claim, that they figured out, how a useful nuclear fusion reactor can be built, why should a niche application like "melt a hole into an icy moon" be the project to use it on? Is there a reason, why it should not be used on earth, like all the other research teams, who work on useful nuclear fusion try to achieve? When I read the video title, I had a lot of questions. Apparently none of them were addressed.
I have a question: Why do we believe/ How do we know that the ice is "x" kilometers deep? Is this an estimate, or have we calculated it based on observed phenomena?
Hard to imagine what kind of design would be the size of a coffee can while also being able to lay a heavily insulated cable in those conditions for 20+ MILES. The only way I could begin to imagine this working is if the lander was the size of a small house. There has to be a better way.
I appreciate this interview very much. Wouldn't a couple of PowerPoint slides go a long way to clarifying an overview and some details of this novel system? Just a politely submitted thought.
Question: What could life in Europa be made of? Wouldn't skeletons sink to immense depths much more often than new material is freed from the ice, meaning the water becomes purer and purer?
I've personally seen the IC ground when they was trying to excavate an area they dynamited the ice holes they had drilled and it just blew back out the hole you know the dynamite totally incredible what happened that
That is a good question 🤔 but I don't know hope someone does, but I saw this an my brain said "this isn't a good idea" I mean let's say something catastrophic happened we haven't counted on an we irradiated a whole moon we might have lived one day
Unless you are pumping out liquid from the hole onto the surface, material that the probe had melted and passed through would just re-freeze as the probe descended, sealing the hole. Even trying to keep the hole clear might not be possible; the weight of the ice crust would squish frozen material into the gap, so you would have to do some serious reinforcement to have an open void space above the probe as it descended.
@@FoxtrotYouniform The buoyancy of the probe would have to be carefully controlled, wouldn't want it trapped under the ice, or to plummet to the bottom. It would be pretty cool to see what's at the bottom though. I wonder how transparent the water is under there.
The plot thickens! Regarding communication with a probe in the ice, Has anyone investigated the idea to use sound? Hard and dense material conducts sounds very well. Except that this goes for background noise from moving ice too (as well as the singing space whales below the ice) but it should make for some interesting research?
Sound is not impossible but it has it's problems too. The biggest one being bandwidth. This might make the old standard 110 Baud rate look fast... should you remember back a ways when to communicate with a remote computer you actually put the telephone receiver in a cradle. That was data via sound over an inch or so of air. Now substitute that for 10s of kilometers of ice. The medium would tend to roll off high frequencies and as the frequency of sound goes down so does data bandwidth. The same is true with radio waves BTW, communication with submarines here on Earth uses supper low radio frequencies to make it through the water, much lower than the old AM radio. The second Problem with sound waves that can be heard through kilometers of ice is that here on Earth we have a word for these kinds of sounds, we call them earthquakes. I think in this kind of an experiment we would want to keep things that could cause the ice to shift at a minimum. Great idea though, this whole idea of hybrid fission/fusion comes from thinking down new tracks.
Wow talk about burring the Lede. They're developing an interstellar propulsion power source that we could also employ on Earth to balance the renewable power grid! Fraser how much fuel for this propulsion sustenance could a space x starship carryand how far and fast could you go?
When I hear him speaking I hear him using words that fit with the context of "we have done this" but when I hear her speak the selection of words she uses are not consistent with something that was already done, it sounds like "this is the theoretical way it *will* work". So my guess based on what I consider a least common denominator of the word tenses they used is that they have not warmed up a piece of deuterium matrix a measurable amount by means of the mechanism they are proposing. Don't be fooled when scientists talk like this. If they had a proof of concept they would be showing it. It is dishonest to speak in tenses that suggest something exists when you only believe it can exist if you finish engineering it. This is an ethical issue. I don't doubt they can engineer anything they can imagine but if I was a funding agency I would look very very carefully at their work to make certain there are no shenanigans. When people mix tenses like this, while speaking about the same thing, there is often corruption afoot. We shall see... I doubt I'll hear about this again... the only bit that's a bit foggy is the bit that makes it all go... I've heard too many of these pitches in my life to just let this slide. And so to wrap up on a technical point, at around 12:27 it would have been just wonderful to hear the question, "Ok, so what part of that makes it exothermic, it sounds like the trigger pulse comes to rest when the deuteron comes to rest. The energy in the instability comes from the laser and is resolved when the deuteron stops moving, where's the extra energy, how much is it, and why?"
I just want to say it was a bit confusing in the beginning because you verbally kept switching up Fusion and saying Fission reactors. But the title says Fusion.
This was awesome 8D I'm glad I could mostly follow along with the basics. I'm curious and have a few questions and as I am going to make a mess of this I might as well finger paint away :) So, putting aside the technicalities of getting there, would it be better to cap the hole or leave it exposed to space ? I'm going to make the assumption (yep, I know :) ) that the ice will react in a similar way to water ice here on earth, and so as long as you are above it's freezing point you will be able melt it. Is there a point of diminishing returns on temperature vs distance travelling vs energy used to create the heat ? Do you even need a drilling ability ? Is it better then a heating element and maybe what steam could cut through ? Could the spacecraft be turned into a thermos or utilize the vacuum of space and trap and retain some of the heat already imparted to the water ? I'm not a Glaciologist, just a sponge for interesting things, so isn't there a dynamic where melt water on top of a glacier works it's way down and underneath it speeding up the receding process, could this be utilized ? Sonic vibrations were mentioned, what about microwaves, would it be possible to "soften" the ice to make it easier to go through ? Ugh what about hardness ? If non terrestrial ice is harder and more comparable to rock or glass...nm, I'm giving myself a headache. Would there be minerals or compounds within the ice that could be used as fuel to extend reactor life ? Could some element in the ice be purified for possible fiber optics that might aid in signal transfer to the surface. Finally and strangely enough, carbon fiber nano tubing keeps popping up in my head but I'm not sure why or what problem it could solve, need to sleep on it. Sorry for this printed diarrhea but thankfully this is only about half of what I could remember what I was curious about :P Cheers !
Leaving the hole open would be a wonderful solution. However, you have to have somewhere to put the melted water. For a little while, the water could be pumped well clear of the hole, perhaps after that it may clear itself as steam. Pretty soon that steam will turn into snow and fall back down on top of the steam stream and a plug will be formed. It is best to have the water refreeze in a controlled manner right from the start for consistency. The problem of the cable to the surface was not well explained but only alluded to. The size of the drop vessel is set more by the size of the cable roll than almost anything else. Think kilometers of cable. As mentioned, the cable jacket needs to be robust to hold up against shifting ice. Having a hot enough head to melt through these layers of ice is just the start of figuring out the project. Great questions, it made me think too.
Depending on the local atmospheric pressure, water would only go from solid to gas. (Which is why it would be hard and almost impossible to find liquid water anywhere in the solar system, even if you melted that ice)
@@B0tch0 ty :) I wonder if the "bore hole" could be pressurized by the spacecraft and what benefits it would bring. Again I elude to vague recollections of rapid glacier retreat and how pressure might be a factor in that process and how it might possibly be utilized here, I'm just spitballing :) as this is quite fascinating.
@@PhonicallyPsychotic to be honest, your comment got me thinking and I eventually wrote something back. Thank you :) Regarding having a kilometer long hole with water vapor going though it, I think a good analogy would be to compare it to leaving a deep freezer open for some time. All the walls would slowly get smaller to the point where they would close (similar to the water in the Romain aquaduct with minerals). All deposits would accumulate until they couldn't go through anymore. If I were to extrapolate from this line of thinking, the vents of Europa might be the result of meteorite impacts combined with tidal forces from Jupiter.
If there's life in Europa with no escape from the water, and we could do harm to a trapped world. Maybe when we have mastered space ourselves would be a better time?
Can this really be considered a fusion reactor when the primary source of the heat and energy is the fissionable material? The fusion reaction seems to only fuel neutrons, as intended when their choice of reactants is Deuterium + Deuterium, which don't produce much energy, but neutrons and tritium.
We need to agree to additional interviews after this month. Like every 1/3 videos should be interviews so no one gets fatigued and enjoyment stays ecstatic levels.
@@ilessthan3bees Before you leave a comment there should be a smiley face icon below. Click that icon and the box cat should be in the first grouping. Happy commenting 😀
salt bomb? honestly a series of satellites positioned reflecting the suns rays might be able to melt an area possibly? or would that throw it out of wack and cause bad things
Quantum Matrix to fold space is the best way for interstellar travel. Fusion reactor is a good power source, but the ship will need approximately 4 fusion reactors. 3 for electricity driven thrust. And a singular reactor for the quantum matrix. This matrix, much like a human mind, exploits quantum mechanical principles to "fold space," which cuts the travel time down exponentially.
Well you soon will know when every house has one in their basement to heat water for the coffee. I want this to be true but it's almost too good to be so. One of the questions should have been, 'what are the problems'.
Hear me out dude, this video is totally gnarly! It's all about this insane fusion reactor that could totally melt through an ice sheet, brah. The visuals and explanations are totally sick and make it super easy to wrap your head around how it all works. And the best part, dude? It's all about clean energy production, which is totally rad. Like, imagine all the possibilities if we keep researching and developing this tech, it could be totally awesome.
The usual idea is have the descending probe spool out a communications cable behind it. The top end is attached to the landing craft which has the antenna for comms to Earth.
Vents and plumes provide "free" samples of under ice ocean chemistry that can be returned to earth for analysis. This is an ill considered and hugely expensive idea with no prospect of returning samples.
Ref' the header title - It won't work, when you melt a path through ice in order to penetrate the ice to a great depth the melt water has to go somewhere, this will move to the rear of the reactor in this case and refreeze as the reactor travels further down. I am not suggesting the reactor will not work in itself but this suggested practical application will hit problems unless you intend bury it in its own tomb, retrieving any collected data would be an issue too given the tube will reseal itself behind and we are ignoring any such unknowns like solid objects it might hit like meteorites etc
This technology has been tested extensively in Greenland to melt a probe into the ice and it works surprisingly well. The probe descends faster than the ice can lock it in.
@@frasercain but Europa is not Greenland, the conditions are predicted the moon is so smooth it shows its massively effected by gravitational tensions, also in Greenland they have not got the same temps or the depth they want to go.
Here's an interview I did with a scientist at NASA going into extreme detail about how melt probes work if you're skeptical: ruclips.net/user/livef7z8Fv_CEaY?feature=share
Another buried lead. If this device produces net power, as it must if is to melt ice, then it can produce power on earth. I gather that the work so far has been theoretical. I would love to hear about lab demonstrations of a prototype.
I don't want to be the bear of bad news and a truly don't. I'm hopeful they can figure it out, but melting and drilling is not going to be just enough because we have never been at these kinds of pressures. We don't even know what kind of ice this is could be similar to like dry ice and more likely that's what it's going to be. And the moment you melt on top of pressure, it is more likely going to turn from a vapor to a solid because that's your mountain. It's going to turn some of the ice and the steam that steam is going to rise and the father. It rises away from the melting device. I don't know what they're going to call it but I'm sure they'll give it some kind of name. But anyways wants to steam rises father enough away from the melting device. It's going to turn from a vapor to a solid instantly, even with a rotating device trying to keep it spinning. We're going to have to try to figure out how to do that here on earth before we even try to even think about drilling over 30 mi of ice. If we can't do it here, there's no way we're going to be able to do it there I feel the technology is not ready for that kind of a job for mankind, but it's with anything you got to learn how to crawl before you can walk. So I mean we have to start somewhere. We might as well start with their ide als and go from there
Not being a scientist or an engineer, I wonder if it would be possible to put a venting system at the mouth of the hole and heat the water at the reactor high enough to turn it to steam and essentially create a chimney and draw the steam out enough to keep the hole open. I'm sure it would be impossible to keep the steam from refreezing but it might help. How about a laser on top of the device that adds heat and keeps the hole open? Also depositing a series of radio repeaters along the hole to transmit the signal. from the device.
The steam probably would recrystallize, so reheating it as it escapes the shaft would be a cool idea. Maybe the radio repeaters would also have that function. Don't have to heat up the steam that much and there shouldn't be any water. Without an atmosphere on these ice moons, the ice should transition directly to vapor with a bit of heat since it will be beneath the triple point. Not sure if that will remain true if you bore a hole dozens of kilometers deep. Would it then fill with gasses of one kind or another from the gravity and increase the pressure, allowing water to form? And what happens when you hit the subsurface ocean? Will all that pressure cause the water to shoot up the shaft at high speeds?
Why using this deuterium lattice fusion reactor only to melt ice on a moon? How come I can not replace the batteries in my flash light with this fancy technology?
tbh...we haven´t even solved the self-heating of current fusion reactor projects like ITER, Wendelstein 7-x, JET and others. The needed amount of energy and tons of cooled magnets involved, in order to make the atoms fuse, is crazy. ITER is about the size and may works in that scale, but i doubt it will be effective in less than 2 decades. The time of those two sciencists is pretty much a "Elon-Time". Strong nuclear force is no joke - it´s really hard to get 2 atoms so close, to make them fuse. The long travel time is also an issue, due tunneling effects and could end up in a huge disaster - not to mention, the problematic with the launch, in the first place. I seriously think, that the payload itself wouldn´t get a permission at all, but hey: We can at least hope, right?^^ But realistic would be, to understand fusion first, make it effective and then try to miniaturize it for this exploration. The idea is nice, but there are still so many problems to solve first, imho.
Why are they afraid to call it, "cold fusion", because that's what we are talking about, no different than Fleschman and Ponds except for the gamma ray trigger addition.
This is stereotypical cold fusion... how much do you want to be the "lattice" is just Palladium. Everything they have described here, is the exact same system that has been debunked for decades. Doesn't anybody find this concerning??
Nothing to do with cold fusion. LCF is a method that involves confining deuterium within a metal lattice and bombarding them with gamma rays. This increases the likelihood of fusion due to the high energies and proximity of the deuterium atoms. LCF doesn't aim to produce net energy but focuses on generating neutrons for controlled fission reactions.
Would there even be a melt pool? No atmosphere on these moons so any ice that's heated would instantly transition to a vapor since it's below the triple point of water. Would probably be a clean hole in the ice for at least a little while, until the vapor recrystallized on the shaft (again without a water phase). I would worry about the salts and other grit that could not vaporize and just cling to the probe. Maybe the probe could make little u-bends on occasion to let sediment settle somewhere, or go down at an angle so the sediment collects on the slope? I published a hard sci-fi short story with Baen books (Robosoldiers) about a fast breeder reactor for an Enceladus mission that would ablate a hole through the ice. I called it HESTIA, Hexahedral Enceladus Surveyor with Thermal Ice Ablation. My prototype had serrated wheels to apply counterpressure to the ice from all the vapor generated from the reactor waste heat.
Why fusion? Wouldn't even need to be Fission. A contained RTG would melt through the ice. Hell, I did an experiment in school where putting a weight on a piece of wire wrapped around a block of ice and it went straight through it.
Many years away from pure fusion doing any useful work, Yes. But fusion has been working at a loss for a long time. This particular power factory sounds more like fission being enhanced by low level fusion rather than a pure fusion power source. Interesting if it can be developed. It sounds like it is still very much just the beginning of research.
![Revolutionary 100-Kilometer Space Telescope [NIAC 2023]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/l8NZDimTlwM/mqdefault.jpg)
Once again proving this is one of the most underrated channels of all time. Thanks for all you do Fraser and Universe Today team! And of course the researchers and everyone involved at NASA etc
You always bring the best, down to earth interviews. Make these fascinating topics accessable to folks like me 😊
Dudes claiming magical coffee can nuclear fusion, what is down to earth about that?
@@seditt5146 it made sense to me 🤷🏿♂️
It is not cold fusion or the ponds-fleisch experiment as many comments are saying. The researchers could have done a better job explaining it but if you google lattice confinement fusion you will find the details (mentioned in the video but easy to miss).
My own short explanation is that although deuterium gets confined inside of a metal lattice, unlike in cold fusion it also gets bombarded with gamma rays tuned to be adsorbed by deuterium giving the particular atom that adsorbs it very high energies and being confined near other deuterium atoms the likelihood of fusion is high.
Also the fusion is not there to produce net energy (this kind of fusion has been shown to happen without net energy production) but to produce neutrons that are used to cause fission in a controlled way.
That is very cool because you can use fissile materials that won't sustain a chain reaction or at masses that won't. As they mentioned it also allows using safer and cheaper fuels like thorium and it would also allow "burning" that fuel way more completely than a regular nuclear fission reactor.
It should also be extremely throtleable and could be almost completely off during the travel time which is quite useful for this application: Off during travel, max throttle while melting through the ice and a low setting once down there to just power the instruments and communications for longer.
I really hope they succeed, cant wait to see the Europa space wales.
Great addendum to the interview, thank you.
Interesting... my AI sensor went off.
@@Energine1 I think your AI sensors _are_ off. The style is way too human and there are typos.
Why don't they ever mention fissile material in the video or did I miss something?
@@unvergebeneid They did mention it but briefly at the beginning and then later too giving a bit more of detail but without really insisting on it.
If you blink you miss the mentions of fission so missing it is understandable.
If the water is freezing behind the prode, how do you transmit through 30 km of ice?
I'd be curious to see how big the cracks are near the geysers. We could probably get a small probe through there.
Another excellent interview! You do these so well. Thanks for all you do. 😊
❤❤
Love your interviews.
Always conversed so well ❤❤❤
9:45 itws amazing how chill this awesome dude is as he reveals simple fusion(functional)
I like the background you picked for the green screen!
9:00 i think she said we can use an 'ice VI' variant to host a dueteride infusion , and use it a a simple elegant fusion source
Great guests and conversation 👌 👏
Loved the video, and NIAC series?
Could we distill deuterium from the water ice on Europa to re-fuel in situ if the Genie reactor works??
That was awesome!!!! Thank you!
Agreed
So as it melts it's easy down, a communication cable spools out behind. Then on the surface there's some communication equipment.
The cable itself has to be robust against cold temperatures and high pressures and perhaps also shifting ice.
Unless it sends some kind of a radio signal directly through the ice.
What an exciting technology. Can't wait to see the followups!
Very interesting. Thanks Fraser
This is great - more NIAC interviews please!!!
Lattice confinement fusion should be getting researched and developed for here on an energy hungry earth as well . ITER looks like it'll be at least 60 years away before it's commercially developed. They both might never work commercially but 1 might and 1 might not.
How do you keep ice from freezing around the cables to the surface of Europa?
You let the ice freeze the cable in place behind you as you drill down.
I could neither extract from the interview, what the state of the project is, nor what stage they are really working on, nor if any (or which) of the basics have already been demonstrated to work . Are they doing experimental work at all, or is that all about theoretical physics?
Was all of that speculation about applications of a technology, which does not exist? What does "get a design established" mean here? A design for a proof of principle? A design for a useful system of something, that has allready been demonstrated (Where, when? Was it mentioned somewhere in the interview and I just did not get it?) to work in general? A design to implement a device the size of a teapot, which is just assumed to have the required power output for a melting probe?
And if they claim, that they figured out, how a useful nuclear fusion reactor can be built, why should a niche application like "melt a hole into an icy moon" be the project to use it on? Is there a reason, why it should not be used on earth, like all the other research teams, who work on useful nuclear fusion try to achieve?
When I read the video title, I had a lot of questions. Apparently none of them were addressed.
Sounded like they have thought about an idea while getting stoned and are working through it now. Very early stages.
Can't wait till we finally pierce the iceshell worlds, i hope it will be soon so I'm alive to see it
I have a question:
Why do we believe/ How do we know that the ice is "x" kilometers deep?
Is this an estimate, or have we calculated it based on observed phenomena?
Estimate. Hopefully JUICE or Clipper will give us more accurate depth info before we try to send a probe like this.
@@stuartreed37
Thanks, man.
Is there a version of the video without music ?
How does the probe communicate with the surface once the kilometers of ice have long frozen above it ?
16:50 OMG!! self igniting?! amazing
Great video, Frasier...👍
What's the danger of the ice shifting around and snapping the cable?
A sensor network with nodes placed every 100 meters might be able to convey a message down below the ice.
The guy being interviewed says Enceladus the same way you say enchiladas
Hard to imagine what kind of design would be the size of a coffee can while also being able to lay a heavily insulated cable in those conditions for 20+ MILES.
The only way I could begin to imagine this working is if the lander was the size of a small house.
There has to be a better way.
I appreciate this interview very much. Wouldn't a couple of PowerPoint slides go a long way to clarifying an overview and some details of this novel system? Just a politely submitted thought.
Question: there will be rocks intermixed with the ice, since meteors exists. What are changes of hitting a rock when melting through km's of ice?
Question: What could life in Europa be made of? Wouldn't skeletons sink to immense depths much more often than new material is freed from the ice, meaning the water becomes purer and purer?
Doesn't ice in a vacuum sublimate to Gas instantly? would you drill a hole hit liquid and slowly drain evaporate the core?
Reload it like a shotgun or cannon for reactor or bring extra reactor so can reload and prolong the mission not scientist just curious.
Great topic and interview.
Naboo
I don’t know why I took so long but I really enjoy these science fiction space related books
Oh thanks, glad you're enjoying them.
I've personally seen the IC ground when they was trying to excavate an area they dynamited the ice holes they had drilled and it just blew back out the hole you know the dynamite totally incredible what happened that
You would need a lot of dynamite to get through 30km of ice, which would be too heavy for a mission
Thanks
wouldn't the water pressure push the vehicle back up when it broke through the ice and hit the water?
That is a good question 🤔 but I don't know hope someone does, but I saw this an my brain said "this isn't a good idea" I mean let's say something catastrophic happened we haven't counted on an we irradiated a whole moon we might have lived one day
Unless you are pumping out liquid from the hole onto the surface, material that the probe had melted and passed through would just re-freeze as the probe descended, sealing the hole. Even trying to keep the hole clear might not be possible; the weight of the ice crust would squish frozen material into the gap, so you would have to do some serious reinforcement to have an open void space above the probe as it descended.
Nope, Its supporting the ice. And the water would freeze after the probe passes.
@@FoxtrotYouniform The buoyancy of the probe would have to be carefully controlled, wouldn't want it trapped under the ice, or to plummet to the bottom. It would be pretty cool to see what's at the bottom though. I wonder how transparent the water is under there.
As long as the probe has higher density than the water around it, it'll sink.
The plot thickens! Regarding communication with a probe in the ice, Has anyone investigated the idea to use sound? Hard and dense material conducts sounds very well. Except that this goes for background noise from moving ice too (as well as the singing space whales below the ice) but it should make for some interesting research?
Sound is not impossible but it has it's problems too. The biggest one being bandwidth. This might make the old standard 110 Baud rate look fast... should you remember back a ways when to communicate with a remote computer you actually put the telephone receiver in a cradle. That was data via sound over an inch or so of air. Now substitute that for 10s of kilometers of ice. The medium would tend to roll off high frequencies and as the frequency of sound goes down so does data bandwidth. The same is true with radio waves BTW, communication with submarines here on Earth uses supper low radio frequencies to make it through the water, much lower than the old AM radio. The second Problem with sound waves that can be heard through kilometers of ice is that here on Earth we have a word for these kinds of sounds, we call them earthquakes. I think in this kind of an experiment we would want to keep things that could cause the ice to shift at a minimum. Great idea though, this whole idea of hybrid fission/fusion comes from thinking down new tracks.
too many unknown, too low bandwidth, power hungry, non-zero risk to biology,
wow, this is a great idea. I hope they succeed
Why not a fusion laser instead? Seems more practical to drill with it from orbit.... if it could be stationary?
Yes powered by a hypermatter reactor. All we need are the giant kyber crystals🤣🤣
Gonna need to perfect a whole new energy tech first ? ETA is 2100 or so?
Seems to me it would be best to pump all the water out of the hole as it is melted so it won't refreeze on top
Would love to see this work.
Wow talk about burring the Lede. They're developing an interstellar propulsion power source that we could also employ on Earth to balance the renewable power grid!
Fraser how much fuel for this propulsion sustenance could a space x starship carryand how far and fast could you go?
Fusion fast fission? Deuterium to make neutrons to fission plutonium?
When I hear him speaking I hear him using words that fit with the context of "we have done this" but when I hear her speak the selection of words she uses are not consistent with something that was already done, it sounds like "this is the theoretical way it *will* work". So my guess based on what I consider a least common denominator of the word tenses they used is that they have not warmed up a piece of deuterium matrix a measurable amount by means of the mechanism they are proposing. Don't be fooled when scientists talk like this. If they had a proof of concept they would be showing it. It is dishonest to speak in tenses that suggest something exists when you only believe it can exist if you finish engineering it. This is an ethical issue. I don't doubt they can engineer anything they can imagine but if I was a funding agency I would look very very carefully at their work to make certain there are no shenanigans. When people mix tenses like this, while speaking about the same thing, there is often corruption afoot. We shall see... I doubt I'll hear about this again... the only bit that's a bit foggy is the bit that makes it all go... I've heard too many of these pitches in my life to just let this slide. And so to wrap up on a technical point, at around 12:27 it would have been just wonderful to hear the question, "Ok, so what part of that makes it exothermic, it sounds like the trigger pulse comes to rest when the deuteron comes to rest. The energy in the instability comes from the laser and is resolved when the deuteron stops moving, where's the extra energy, how much is it, and why?"
I agree 100%. I had alarms going off in my head during this entire interview.
First step getting the fusion reactor. I patented a box that makes fusion reactors.
I just want to say it was a bit confusing in the beginning because you verbally kept switching up Fusion and saying Fission reactors. But the title says Fusion.
This was awesome 8D I'm glad I could mostly follow along with the basics. I'm curious and have a few questions and as I am going to make a mess of this I might as well finger paint away :) So, putting aside the technicalities of getting there, would it be better to cap the hole or leave it exposed to space ? I'm going to make the assumption (yep, I know :) ) that the ice will react in a similar way to water ice here on earth, and so as long as you are above it's freezing point you will be able melt it. Is there a point of diminishing returns on temperature vs distance travelling vs energy used to create the heat ? Do you even need a drilling ability ? Is it better then a heating element and maybe what steam could cut through ? Could the spacecraft be turned into a thermos or utilize the vacuum of space and trap and retain some of the heat already imparted to the water ? I'm not a Glaciologist, just a sponge for interesting things, so isn't there a dynamic where melt water on top of a glacier works it's way down and underneath it speeding up the receding process, could this be utilized ? Sonic vibrations were mentioned, what about microwaves, would it be possible to "soften" the ice to make it easier to go through ? Ugh what about hardness ? If non terrestrial ice is harder and more comparable to rock or glass...nm, I'm giving myself a headache. Would there be minerals or compounds within the ice that could be used as fuel to extend reactor life ? Could some element in the ice be purified for possible fiber optics that might aid in signal transfer to the surface. Finally and strangely enough, carbon fiber nano tubing keeps popping up in my head but I'm not sure why or what problem it could solve, need to sleep on it. Sorry for this printed diarrhea but thankfully this is only about half of what I could remember what I was curious about :P Cheers !
Leaving the hole open would be a wonderful solution. However, you have to have somewhere to put the melted water. For a little while, the water could be pumped well clear of the hole, perhaps after that it may clear itself as steam. Pretty soon that steam will turn into snow and fall back down on top of the steam stream and a plug will be formed. It is best to have the water refreeze in a controlled manner right from the start for consistency. The problem of the cable to the surface was not well explained but only alluded to. The size of the drop vessel is set more by the size of the cable roll than almost anything else. Think kilometers of cable. As mentioned, the cable jacket needs to be robust to hold up against shifting ice. Having a hot enough head to melt through these layers of ice is just the start of figuring out the project. Great questions, it made me think too.
Depending on the local atmospheric pressure, water would only go from solid to gas. (Which is why it would be hard and almost impossible to find liquid water anywhere in the solar system, even if you melted that ice)
@@lenwhatever4187 Thank you for the reply :)
@@B0tch0 ty :) I wonder if the "bore hole" could be pressurized by the spacecraft and what benefits it would bring. Again I elude to vague recollections of rapid glacier retreat and how pressure might be a factor in that process and how it might possibly be utilized here, I'm just spitballing :) as this is quite fascinating.
@@PhonicallyPsychotic to be honest, your comment got me thinking and I eventually wrote something back. Thank you :)
Regarding having a kilometer long hole with water vapor going though it, I think a good analogy would be to compare it to leaving a deep freezer open for some time. All the walls would slowly get smaller to the point where they would close (similar to the water in the Romain aquaduct with minerals). All deposits would accumulate until they couldn't go through anymore.
If I were to extrapolate from this line of thinking, the vents of Europa might be the result of meteorite impacts combined with tidal forces from Jupiter.
Great vid 👍👍👍
If there's life in Europa with no escape from the water, and we could do harm to a trapped world. Maybe when we have mastered space ourselves would be a better time?
Can this really be considered a fusion reactor when the primary source of the heat and energy is the fissionable material? The fusion reaction seems to only fuel neutrons, as intended when their choice of reactants is Deuterium + Deuterium, which don't produce much energy, but neutrons and tritium.
We need to agree to additional interviews after this month. Like every 1/3 videos should be interviews so no one gets fatigued and enjoyment stays ecstatic levels.
We need additional cat in box emoji. I don't know how you added those, but every comment should be punctuated with them.
@@ilessthan3bees Before you leave a comment there should be a smiley face icon below. Click that icon and the box cat should be in the first grouping. Happy commenting 😀
use fission to melt through rather
19:05 what is a coffee can?? a starbucks double shot can or a tin of cafe du monde???
Methinks the latter.
These guests probably sounded great on paper.
salt bomb? honestly a series of satellites positioned reflecting the suns rays might be able to melt an area possibly? or would that throw it out of wack and cause bad things
Sunlight is 1/25th as strong as Jupiter
So... how is this different from "cold fusion"?
Quantum Matrix to fold space is the best way for interstellar travel. Fusion reactor is a good power source, but the ship will need approximately 4 fusion reactors. 3 for electricity driven thrust. And a singular reactor for the quantum matrix. This matrix, much like a human mind, exploits quantum mechanical principles to "fold space," which cuts the travel time down exponentially.
Did he say 'coffee can' ? Coffee in Australia doesn't come in cans, so how big is that?
Well you soon will know when every house has one in their basement to heat water for the coffee. I want this to be true but it's almost too good to be so. One of the questions should have been, 'what are the problems'.
Cold fusion guys ? When will they have a reactor ready for demonstration ?
For god sake man! They have done their best to avoid linking it to that demonised branch of science and you just come along and blurt it out!
I read this as Europe rather than Europa and thought that something must have gone very wrong with ITER.
Hear me out dude, this video is totally gnarly! It's all about this insane fusion reactor that could totally melt through an ice sheet, brah. The visuals and explanations are totally sick and make it super easy to wrap your head around how it all works. And the best part, dude? It's all about clean energy production, which is totally rad. Like, imagine all the possibilities if we keep researching and developing this tech, it could be totally awesome.
Is this cold fusion again? a lattice of metal atoms? WTF?
In this video: Humans discuss how to warm other globes.
What about contamination? Can't you just fly a probe over it and develop an image based off of radar?
You can't actually sample the water without digging through the ice.
yet another fascinating and inspiring interview, thank you.
There fuel setup reminds me of a pebble bed reactor, but with a fusion boost.
if the ice freez's over above the probe wouldnt we lose contact with it? ?
The usual idea is have the descending probe spool out a communications cable behind it.
The top end is attached to the landing craft which has the antenna for comms to Earth.
@@massimookissed1023 ah thx
24:48 it's mentioned here in the video
Vents and plumes provide "free" samples of under ice ocean chemistry that can be returned to earth for analysis. This is an ill considered and hugely expensive idea with no prospect of returning samples.
Is this still theoretical or have they produced power with a demonstrator?
They did not. You'll know when they do.
Micro waves heat water .... melt water ... is a directional micro wave drill possible ?
You must have watched The Core
Ref' the header title - It won't work, when you melt a path through ice in order to penetrate the ice to a great depth the melt water has to go somewhere, this will move to the rear of the reactor in this case and refreeze as the reactor travels further down.
I am not suggesting the reactor will not work in itself but this suggested practical application will hit problems unless you intend bury it in its own tomb, retrieving any collected data would be an issue too given the tube will reseal itself behind and we are ignoring any such unknowns like solid objects it might hit like meteorites etc
This technology has been tested extensively in Greenland to melt a probe into the ice and it works surprisingly well. The probe descends faster than the ice can lock it in.
@@frasercain but Europa is not Greenland, the conditions are predicted the moon is so smooth it shows its massively effected by gravitational tensions, also in Greenland they have not got the same temps or the depth they want to go.
Here's an interview I did with a scientist at NASA going into extreme detail about how melt probes work if you're skeptical: ruclips.net/user/livef7z8Fv_CEaY?feature=share
Zowie I’m an engineer and my head is spinning.
Micro-fusion cells: 5 years out. . . get ready for Fallout to become reality.
Highly interest interesting!
Why not just use a slug of plutonium in a uranium case?
Another buried lead. If this device produces net power, as it must if is to melt ice, then it can produce power on earth. I gather that the work so far has been theoretical. I would love to hear about lab demonstrations of a prototype.
1 billion $ for a kilowatt?
No one said that it was cheap.
Another story way over your head, actually.
Opinions are like
I think that is exactly what the granted granted them, the money to design and build prototypes of a currently theoretical device.
Producing nuclear energy using lettuce... it's green !
👍
I don't want to be the bear of bad news and a truly don't. I'm hopeful they can figure it out, but melting and drilling is not going to be just enough because we have never been at these kinds of pressures. We don't even know what kind of ice this is could be similar to like dry ice and more likely that's what it's going to be. And the moment you melt on top of pressure, it is more likely going to turn from a vapor to a solid because that's your mountain. It's going to turn some of the ice and the steam that steam is going to rise and the father. It rises away from the melting device. I don't know what they're going to call it but I'm sure they'll give it some kind of name. But anyways wants to steam rises father enough away from the melting device. It's going to turn from a vapor to a solid instantly, even with a rotating device trying to keep it spinning. We're going to have to try to figure out how to do that here on earth before we even try to even think about drilling over 30 mi of ice. If we can't do it here, there's no way we're going to be able to do it there I feel the technology is not ready for that kind of a job for mankind, but it's with anything you got to learn how to crawl before you can walk. So I mean we have to start somewhere. We might as well start with their ide als and go from there
Way too many um ideas 25:32 um partially formed without um forethought, background um basis and sentences begun, but um never um . . . .
finished.
Not being a scientist or an engineer, I wonder if it would be possible to put a venting system at the mouth of the hole and heat the water at the reactor high enough to turn it to steam and essentially create a chimney and draw the steam out enough to keep the hole open. I'm sure it would be impossible to keep the steam from refreezing but it might help.
How about a laser on top of the device that adds heat and keeps the hole open?
Also depositing a series of radio repeaters along the hole to transmit the signal. from the device.
The steam probably would recrystallize, so reheating it as it escapes the shaft would be a cool idea. Maybe the radio repeaters would also have that function. Don't have to heat up the steam that much and there shouldn't be any water. Without an atmosphere on these ice moons, the ice should transition directly to vapor with a bit of heat since it will be beneath the triple point. Not sure if that will remain true if you bore a hole dozens of kilometers deep. Would it then fill with gasses of one kind or another from the gravity and increase the pressure, allowing water to form? And what happens when you hit the subsurface ocean? Will all that pressure cause the water to shoot up the shaft at high speeds?
Why using this deuterium lattice fusion reactor only to melt ice on a moon? How come I can not replace the batteries in my flash light with this fancy technology?
tbh...we haven´t even solved the self-heating of current fusion reactor projects like ITER, Wendelstein 7-x, JET and others. The needed amount of energy and tons of cooled magnets involved, in order to make the atoms fuse, is crazy. ITER is about the size and may works in that scale, but i doubt it will be effective in less than 2 decades.
The time of those two sciencists is pretty much a "Elon-Time". Strong nuclear force is no joke - it´s really hard to get 2 atoms so close, to make them fuse. The long travel time is also an issue, due tunneling effects and could end up in a huge disaster - not to mention, the problematic with the launch, in the first place.
I seriously think, that the payload itself wouldn´t get a permission at all, but hey: We can at least hope, right?^^
But realistic would be, to understand fusion first, make it effective and then try to miniaturize it for this exploration. The idea is nice, but there are still so many problems to solve first, imho.
Wait, wouldn't the reactor just set the whole surface on fire, considering, it's methane?
Wrong moon, lack of oxygen, etc. Attention first, comments later.
The Fukushima meltdown is almost at the core.😉✌️
Why are they afraid to call it, "cold fusion", because that's what we are talking about, no different than Fleschman and Ponds except for the gamma ray trigger addition.
Because it isn't.
5 years to melt through the ice? Yep, that's a glacial pace alright.
Sometimes you've got to be patient
This is stereotypical cold fusion... how much do you want to be the "lattice" is just Palladium. Everything they have described here, is the exact same system that has been debunked for decades. Doesn't anybody find this concerning??
Ensaladas😂🥗
Cowboys are wondering how duderons are related to fusion
Lattice confinement fusion is the new name for “Cold Fusion”. If this gets funded, it would be the coming of age for Cold Fusion
Nothing to do with cold fusion. LCF is a method that involves confining deuterium within a metal lattice and bombarding them with gamma rays. This increases the likelihood of fusion due to the high energies and proximity of the deuterium atoms. LCF doesn't aim to produce net energy but focuses on generating neutrons for controlled fission reactions.
'melting' through the 'ice' wont work. The cummulative grit and other debris will sink to the bottom of the melt pool and halt progress.
They already use this technique in Greenland to go deep into the ice.
Would there even be a melt pool? No atmosphere on these moons so any ice that's heated would instantly transition to a vapor since it's below the triple point of water. Would probably be a clean hole in the ice for at least a little while, until the vapor recrystallized on the shaft (again without a water phase). I would worry about the salts and other grit that could not vaporize and just cling to the probe. Maybe the probe could make little u-bends on occasion to let sediment settle somewhere, or go down at an angle so the sediment collects on the slope?
I published a hard sci-fi short story with Baen books (Robosoldiers) about a fast breeder reactor for an Enceladus mission that would ablate a hole through the ice. I called it HESTIA, Hexahedral Enceladus Surveyor with Thermal Ice Ablation. My prototype had serrated wheels to apply counterpressure to the ice from all the vapor generated from the reactor waste heat.
@@frasercain Really, Fraser?
A self-contained nuclear-powered probe? In Greenland?
I don't think so.
Why fusion? Wouldn't even need to be Fission. A contained RTG would melt through the ice. Hell, I did an experiment in school where putting a weight on a piece of wire wrapped around a block of ice and it went straight through it.
RTGs are fission. Subcritical fission.
We need some diagrms
Cold fusion???
Sadly, we are many many years away from fusion.
So... you didn't listen to a word of the interview, is what you're saying. Gotcha.
We have achieved fusion.
Many years away from pure fusion doing any useful work, Yes. But fusion has been working at a loss for a long time. This particular power factory sounds more like fission being enhanced by low level fusion rather than a pure fusion power source. Interesting if it can be developed. It sounds like it is still very much just the beginning of research.
We are about 8 minutes from fusion, plus however long it takes for the energy from that fusion to reach the surface of the sun.