Boeing just patented a jet engine powered by lasers and nuclear explosions.

Link?

Wouldn't you know it... I have been investing in hamsters and treadmills for use in aviation. Damn!

Link

Come on man, just give us the Readers Digest Version.

No need to bog us down with all of those details and technical jargon.

Cliffs:





but in a jet engine.

Awesome.

So much win!

Enviro-weenies will never allow it to happen.

Technical  Cliff Notes:

High powered lasers focus on nuclear fuel like deuterium and/ or tritium.  Nuclear fusion results, forcing hydrogen/helium out  of the nozzle at high speed.  

The article notes that it exists only in the patent, because its "out there" a ways.  

Yup.

Uh yeah... After reading the theory on the link above I'm pretty sure it'll never work. And if it by some looney tune chance is successful it'll probably kill people who are exposed to it long enough.

The Chinese will build it....

think about it.  

So basically they just filed a patent for laser initiated Orion drive?

 

Looks like it, kind of.  This one is cooler though, because it uses fission to power the laser, which initiates a fusion reaction to provide the actual thrust (limiting, if not eliminating, the fallout which is handy for atmospheric flight).  It then uses the neutron radiation from the fusion reaction to maintain the fission reaction.  Theoretically the two reactions would sustain each other (so long as the fuel for each reaction lasts), but the whole system could be shut down by simply cutting power to the laser.

The beauty is that the fusion reaction doesn't need to be self sustaining (which is good because we don't know how to do that yet), while the fission reaction (which results in nasty byproducts) can be contained within the engine.  

The challenge will be whether or not the right materials exist that can handle the heat/energy this thing would generate, and if it's possible to shield it sufficiently to make it safe while keeping the size and weight low enough for it to be practical.

Well looks like the price of night sights is about to go through the roof.

It's an engineering team's practical joke on their project manager.

It looks like a turbofan engine with a big ass bass mouth scoop but no air is used.

Deuterium nuclear esplosion 'cause LASERZ!!!

Thrust face to absorb heat and mechanical energy of nuclear esplosion ALSO powers LASERZ!!! Mein Gott, what Boeing could teach the Navy about thermal transfer and nucular reactions! The mind boggles.

CleanFusion, coming on to an airport near you!

What Boeing's engineers cleverly omitted is that they have a working prototype, and it looks something like this:


AMURRICA!

BTW, you can't contain radioactive fissile material in a hypothetical heat engine that is DESIGNED to eject superheated radioactive particles at high speed. A turbo Chernobyl "jet" engine ain't exactly eco-friendly.

What could go wrong?

lol

If it brings us tech as cool as this, I'd be willing to make that sacrifice.  That said, it will probably be at least a decade before the first prototype is even built (if it ever is).  I'd be surprised if this ever reaches the operational stage before the idea is supplanted by newer technology, and downright shocked if it gets there before the patent expires.  That alone makes me wonder if they already did the math and decided it can't work, and merely filed the patent to troll our enemies into wasting resources trying.