Expanse? I started reading the books and a ship receives a distress call. They are the closest ship and, by law, they have to go to the rescue. Which is a stupid law. They might be nearby but doing 800 KPS relative in the wrong direction. A ship further away, but which was already on more favorable vector could get there first. I concluded the authors either didn't understand ballistics or didn't give a s*** so I stopped reading. "More realistic than most sci-fi shows" is damning with faint praise.
Now, THIS is more like what a fusion-engine spacecraft should look like!
Luke Long
The authors of the expanse admit they’re not scientists, but they consult with a lot of experts on stuff and try to make their narrative at least plausible. They’re like the GRRM of sci-fi, in the sense that GRRM one time read that EyeWitness children’s picture book about Castles and then he wrote ASOIAF. Also one of the Expanse authors is literally GRRM’s assistant
Cameron Flores
All ships have magic unlimited Delta-V drives That alone should cause you to put down the book
We have no example of working energy positive fusion yet, so talking about what that drive would look like is nonsense
Obviously you wouldn't use a "nozzle" for any super high Isp engine, it would be electro magnets controlling the stream.
Jaxson Harris
The illustration in is modeled after Project Daedalus, a serious study of an interstellar probe with an "Orion" style drive. Except that the "bombs" aren't kiloton nuclear weapons but pellets of tritium-helium 3 ignited by converging electron beams (those circles around the engine bell.) Project of the British Interplanetary Society. Inertial confinement fusion has turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined a few decades ago.
Deuterium-tritium fusion gives a (theoretical)exhaust velocity of 8.65% of lightspeed. "Theoretical" means no losses, not even to neutrinos.
A voyage of 10 AU, turning over at mid-point, at a constant 1 gee requires starting out with 34% of your final (empty tanks) mass in fuel.
Maybe ships in The Expanse always travel at low-accelerations to save fuel. I don't know. Do they ever attack each other by playing their exhausts over the enemy? Hard to think of a more effective weapon. ("The Kzinti Lesson")
Isaac Wright
is this just the BT tower with rockets on the end?
