Fusion Reactor To Melt Through Europa's Ice [NIAC 2023] 

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.

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 😊

This is the first I've heard of Lattice Confiment Fusion. Can't say I understand it but it's intriguing and I'm looking forward to delving deeper. Thanks!

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. 😊 ❤❤

Great show! I felt like Theresa Benyo was able to explain some of these technical ideas in a very understandable way.

Plot twist: Intelligent life exists under the ice. They view this as an act of war and wipe out humanity. I say we do it.

Love your interviews. Always conversed so well ❤❤❤

Well, if we had a Fusion Reactor space exploration would be child's play.

What a great interview! Thank you.

9:45 itws amazing how chill this awesome dude is as he reveals simple fusion(functional)

Superb interview. I loved the questions about other application and scaling up of the design.

I like the background you picked for the green screen!

Fantastic interview! I learned a lot about different ways to propel craft in space and also how to try to melt through kilometers of shifting ice on Enceladus. There goes my idea of sending three Nuclear missiles to bust open the ice to get to the water. I will go back into my cave now. lol.

Cool fusion

Following power generation, cable shear seems like the real challenge for exploring under the ice of worlds like Enceladus or Europa. EM just doesn't like to propagate through water/ice very far, and any cabling up to the surface is going to have to be tough enough to survive ice shift/shear while being light enough to not totally shoot the mass budget for your mission on its own. For now, the best alternative to a surface-based transmitter might actually end up being to melt/drill down into the water, do your survey, then melt your way back up to the surface to transmit your data.

What an exciting technology. Can't wait to see the followups!

Thank you Fraser. I really enjoy the content, though only recently discovered your channel.

This is great - more NIAC interviews please!!!

That was awesome!!!! Thank you!

Very interesting. Thanks Fraser

1:23 GladOS confinement is very necessary indeed

Great guests and conversation 👌 👏

Great topic and interview.

A probe could melt its way down but as the ice refreezes behind the probe, so then comes the problem of communication with the device, perhaps unwind a very thin cable but then any geological movement would sever the line. Many problems here but any problem can be overcome but imagine the pressure at 30KM below the surface.

Wonderful power concept, had never thought of it and it could have other long term applications. ** BUT ** as a probe? HOW do you communicate through 30km of ice? Any cable would be frozen in situ, any transmission killed by the water. Do we hope we could use some kind of sonic link?

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

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??

Great content mate

Great video, Frasier...👍

Great vid 👍👍👍

That's exactly the principle behind the first 'H' bombs; very little 'bang' was provided by fusion, but the neutrons massively increased the amount of fissile material that 'fissed'. Surprised they didn't start of with, the whole A-Bomb parentage.

This also seems amazing for district heating and other heating needs on earth

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.

When specific impulse / ISP starts to get measured in days instead of hundreds of seconds... 🤯

great stuff

16:50 OMG!! self igniting?! amazing

Wish I could hit that like button more than once. I rarely get a chance to catch your Monday Q&A episodes live (I'm a working man), and I usually catch up on RU-vid in the late evenings after 12-hr days, but this interview was worth dragging myself back to the computer (instead on watching on the TV where I cannot hit that like button) and watching this a full 2'nd time through. Thank you Fraser!

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.

Cool video and concepts! one other challenge is presumably there are embedded meteorites that have accumulated in the ice over time. Are there strategies for a melt probe to avoid or redirect itself if it hits a rock?

These guests probably sounded great on paper.

"Duderate" is the best word. I love it!

I hope we get some images back from under the ice in my lifetime. That would be amazing

Thinking about all the ice displaced by the drill, wouldn't you want to catch it for rocket fuel? And don't you need the borehole open, for recovery of samples and signal?

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

Fraser is a genius for thinking of this NIAC series!

Thanks

There is an interesting reactor that is rapidly pulsed way into the supercritical where prompt neutrons heat the coolant way hotter than the fuel. That might offer the thrust of a nuclear thermal rocket with an isp of maybe 100,000 seconds.

I personally think Enceladus south pole should be the first place to test this as the ice is way thinner. And the water pressure is less under enceladus ice sheets.

So NASA has an atmospheric and surface probe for Venus, an octocopter for Titan, and a thermo-boaring submarine for Europa in the works. Of course a manned moon base and expeditions to Mars too.

Cool stuff. I am beginning to think Space might well be the place where controlled fusion happens first. Once the materials get there or better yet if they can be mined there, the hardest part of nuclear anything can be bypassed. The whole regulatory shuffle that has held back some of the cleanest and safest power we have here on Earth.

the europa sub is so interesting, what if there is alien life!

POWER. POWER. AND POWER AND SURVIVAL.

Can't wait till we finally pierce the iceshell worlds, i hope it will be soon so I'm alive to see it

One of your comment popped a random question in my head: Is it even possible to have a chunky Uranium asteroid, like, a huge piece of Uranium inside it, something bigger than anything we have on Earth? And what would be the consequence of such an oddity to crash on Earth?

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.

That's my idea for geothermal with sea water, the lattice confinement part.

I wonder what shape of object would be optimal for this. A long, narrow object with minimal frontal area, or a spherical object with minimal surface area per volume?

The company Positron Dynamics (PD) also got a NIAC grant and they worked on a similar scheme except that they planned to use positrons produced by beta decay. I guess that the positron annihilation in the lattice produced gamma rays that would induce fusion. PD never explained why the positrons would induce fusion in the deuterated lattice. So NASA's work could help explaining it.

The guy being interviewed says Enceladus the same way you say enchiladas

12:24 A thermonuclear explosion in slow motion? Sorry Fraser but what you are thinking about isn't an explosion, but fire. The gamma ray trigger is like the oxygen that keeps the thermonuclear fire burning at a steady rate.

Naboo I don’t know why I took so long but I really enjoy these science fiction space related books

There is a design for a fission fragment engine using plutonium with an isp around 1 million seconds. I reckon it is low thrust probably micronewtons

Dreaming has led to space long ago, time for dreamers to take us to other galaxies.

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?

wow, this is a great idea. I hope they succeed

“Power, power, power” and “food, food, food”

If you want to use electricity to cut or melt the ice wouldn't it make more sense to use a fission reactor seeing that they exist?

They invent a new way of fusion as a side project ?

Specific Impulse of 1 MILLION seconds?!. That's 11.5 DAYS...per kilo of fuel? Good lord. I wonder about the thrust and how you could tune that. If you halved the ISP would that double the thrust? The mind boggles at the thought.

I was just going to mention the tidal shifting of the ice would break any cable while ice isn't very transparent to radio signals when those issues were mentioned. Oh well!

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.

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.

Great interview! Question: Perhaps I missed it... but what if said probe runs into rocks/pebbles etc. embedded in the Ice?

yet another fascinating and inspiring interview, thank you.

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?

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?

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?

How do you keep ice from freezing around the cables to the surface of Europa?

Intrestring interview! Thank you.

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?

How does the probe communicate with the surface once the kilometers of ice have long frozen above it ?

Is there a version of the video without music ?

It's like they are describing a sub-atomic mayonnaise; mayo is an emulsion of oil-in-water phase - oil molecules suspended in a water lattice. But instead of being a liquid emulsion, it's sub-atomic particles?

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?

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

Totally stoked now!

I think a huge problem is how to prevent the refreezing ice on top from severing/crushing any tether cables that is needed to send data back. Other than drilling and removing material, I don't see how just melting and sinking will be enough.

We need a ksp mod for the coffee can / wine barrel drive.

Would love to see this work.

Why not make entry via the funnels made by the geezers coming out of Europa as seen by the Juno probe. Surely this would provide a more direct route with less issues concerning melting through ice as the fissures would already be there.

Reload it like a shotgun or cannon for reactor or bring extra reactor so can reload and prolong the mission not scientist just curious.

What's the danger of the ice shifting around and snapping the cable?

Doesn't ice in a vacuum sublimate to Gas instantly? would you drill a hole hit liquid and slowly drain evaporate the core?

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 !

In this video: Humans discuss how to warm other globes.

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?"

First step getting the fusion reactor. I patented a box that makes fusion reactors.