| |
“If we are holding the pressure-temperature of a fusion reactor in steady-state and introduce a flow of pure carbon, the carbon will migrate to the center and form a liquid sphere. Then we let the fusion reaction volume slowly expand without adding more fuel it will lose its ability to fuse little by little. The temperature and pressure will slowly drop allowing for a near perfect crystal lattice to form a diamond. When it finally flickers out, a large diamond without flaws should have formed. If we control the cooling so the diamond doesn’t crack, then we should have our laser focus element. A pure diamond crystal should be able to focus gigajoules of laser light,” Dr. Lee said.
“How big of a reaction area do you need?” Oliver asked.
“We will find a crater the right size and dig it out some.” Dr. Lee said,” Maybe a hundred meters in diameter. The reaction can be held far enough away that the far grav cells don’t melt. The inner ones we use to start the reaction will be a loss. We will need to go to the far side of the moon to find fresh steep craters. Most of the heat will escape via radiation and light. It is also out of sight of prying eyes.”
“What kind of a time frame to get a prototype,” Oliver asked.
“I figure five or six days will be enough of a burn. Maybe three days of a cooling period. And we may be forced to go to zero G to make the crystals grow right. This is going to be a lot of trial and error,” Merry Lee concluded.
“How about torpedoes for the Nautilus and kinetic missiles for the fighters?”
“Those can be ready in about a month. The engineering is simple. To put a fusion reactor at the point of the torpedo maybe an extra two weeks. I don’t think it’s possible for fighter missiles. Too small. If you wanted to rig a torpedo to attach to a fighter that would be easy enough, but the combo won’t fit in the Nautilus’ canisters,”
“A tight timeline but I want to have something that at least gives us a fighting chance against a space-faring adversary. I will wait a few extra weeks if necessary,”
“I know, ‘Walk softly but carry a big stick’. Kind of sad but I saw the Ceres base. Other people have big sticks,”
“After Al’s speed run, I have been wondering, what would happen if two gravity bubbles collided at speed?”
“Sounds like Al is going to get to destroy that test barge,”
“Aww Right!!” Al said from the speakers.
“When the torpedoes are ready Al, you can wait a little,”
“You know how many nanoseconds six weeks is?”
“I don’t know. A lot?” Oliver replied with a grin. Silly AI. “We can test the lasers down at White Sands. They are rigged up for it and it’s a technology we can transfer to Space Force.”
