Is NASA Planning To Ignite Saturn By Fusion? The Coming Of Sol’s New Sun!

Originally posted by mikesingh
Here's an excerpt from the same article...

Recalling that the article's in RINF, which has yet to get the basic science correct on anything I've read there...and I was banned about five times from RINF for correcting them. They are not interested in the truth, particularly.

The last time was over the Boeskov "performance art" piece "ID Sniper Rifle". They had a big "exposé" on this evil new weapon - until I pointed out it was not only fake, but that Boeskov would gladly appear on RINF to discuss the artistic merit of it, complete with contact info for Boeskov. Banned.

We do know Saturn is mostly composed of the same elements as the Sun, hydrogen and helium, but we are unsure if fusion and fission reactions would work exactly the same on Saturn as on Earth.

Oh, sure we are. The physics doesn't change because it's a different planet. Hydrogen's hydrogen. Electrostatic forces are the same everywhere. This is bullcrap from Goliathan, who hasn't got a clue.

However, conventional belief says Deuterium and Tritium (isotopes of Hydrogen) are necessary to accomplish fusion.

Righty-o, because these two have the lowest Coulomb barrier.

Both are likely present deeper into Saturn. What is important to remember is the tremendous pressures inside Saturn are the key here when talking about implosion.

Wrong. Both are NOT likely present deeper into Saturn. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years. It does not persist. It does not occur by chemical combination. Pressure hasn't got crap to do with it. It requires a nuclear process to make it. You can find tritium in stars because there's enough neutrons that it's constantly being created from hydrogen. But there is no tritium on Saturn, there's no mechanism to create it, and any it had to begin with has long ago decayed away, so this is an outright lie. Had you started with Saturn being a huge ball of tritium, it would have decayed away by now - that 12.3 year half-life wreaks havoc with the presence of an element naturally.

As for deuterium, you have to remember that the presence of the extra neutron alters the spectroscopic lines of hydrogen. So you can tell spectroscopically if a planet's atmosphere is heavy with deuterium, which is statistically unlikely anyway. It will no doubt have SOME deuterium, because forming deuterium is a statistical process in a cosmological sense - it's likely that the other planets in the Solar system in general are at least in the ballpark of the proportions you find on Earth, since it all condensed from the same protosolar cloud. This is tempered by the fact that the deuterium is heavier, and so is slower to be dispersed by Solar wind during the formation of the planets. So you'd expect to find more deuterium as you get closer to the Sun, relative to hydrogen, and you do. Earth has a D/H ratio of 1:6250, Saturn is more like 1:58000, because the hydrogen wasn't as preferentially dispersed that far away. So to put it simply, we know how much Saturn has, and it's about 1/10 of the amount you find on Earth.

So the premise is that both D and T are present on Saturn. And tremendous pressures too. But this is only conjecture. Heck! What if it's not?

The premise is incorrect. Just as you don't find natural plutonium 239 on Earth due to that 24,000 year half-life, you're sure not going to find natural tritium that's still hanging around since it was formed, given a 12.3 year half-life.

Just so you guys know, fusion in the sun isn't quite the basic D+T > He-4 + a neutron, there's some other steps involving carbon and a few other light elements. Not to mention that all processes and forces inside stars aren't fully understood, so I HIGHLY doubt it would be possible to turn a gas giant into a star simply by detonating a nuke inside of it.

Originally posted by gravytrain
(and also no oxygen, which means impossible to "ignite" or burn.)

Ummm excuse me but ummm the SUN has no oxygen and it 'burns' very nicely thank you very much.

We call it "fusion" where two hydrogen atoms are 'fused' and release a ton of energy creating helium Yeah I know a simplified version but it does not need oxygen just enough heat to trigger it...

Sun is 92.1 % Hydrogen and 7.8 Helium
Saturn is 75% Hydrogen and 25% Helium


Watch this video and see how much heat Cassini 'could' produce and compare it to the core temp of the Sun



Will it work? Most likely not as our 'scientific experts' in here attest...

The point is WHY even take the chance? What possible scientific value could be gained by dropping 72 lbs of plutonium onto Saturn. That is 6 TIMES the amount in the Fat Boy bomb that nuked Nagasaki

So my only question is WHY Why not leave it in orbit to retrieve in the future?

NASA's New "Sport"

Originally posted by zorgon
We call it "fusion" where two hydrogen atoms are 'fused' and release a ton of energy creating helium Yeah I know a simplified version but it does not need oxygen just enough heat to trigger it...

A bit too oversimplified, I'm afraid. You not only need sufficient heat to fuse H-H, which you won't be getting from a Pu238 fission explosion, which won't happen anyway, but you also need to contain it long enough to reach breakeven so that you get a self-sustaining reaction. With a sun, that's done by gravity and infall heat. Saturn does not have nearly enough gravity for the containment part. The probe does not have nearly enough heat for the ignition part. Thus it won't happen, not by orders and orders of magnitude.

The point is WHY even take the chance? What possible scientific value could be gained by dropping 72 lbs of plutonium onto Saturn. That is 6 TIMES the amount in the Fat Boy bomb that nuked Nagasaki

So my only question is WHY Why not leave it in orbit to retrieve in the future?

Well, because it isn't a chance. What you're saying is a big risk simply cannot occur.

Why drop it in is, you can get data on the atmosphere by how the probe behaves as it enters.

Also, the dramatic invocation of Fat Boy points out a lack of understanding of astrophysical processes. Look at Shoemaker-Levy impacting Jupiter. How many Hiroshimas of energy do you think that represented? Take a guess...

I am so glad I saw this thread. Only because gravytrain's avatar is so darn funny!

Wow, a small piece of simmering Pu is going to initiate a fusion reaction in a gas giant.That is one of the most idiotic things i have ever heard.
Jupiter, which is much larger than saturn, would need to be 75 times more massive to have the gravitational field strong enough to sustain fusion.

Originally posted by zorgon
So my only question is WHY Why not leave it in orbit to retrieve in the future?

And as soon as the cost of reaching Saturn is less than the cost of manufacturing the same amount of plutonium, whoever gets there first will have a ready made means of arming a weapons platform to defend their stake.

And any public challenge with a similar weapon will break the treaty, escalating to an overt full fledged arms race, which does not bode well for making space more hospitable.

Yes, much better to scuttle it and collect the data for future missions than to leave a hunk of plutonium flying circles around one of the moons of Saturn...

What I meant by 'burn' is a nuclear burn. I ruled out fission and Tom has categorically shown fusion to be impossible.

I'll tell you where the real impact is, and you may laugh now but you won't laugh later.

The real impact is environmental. I say so because I believe life exists within the gas giants. I have no idea to what degree of evolution it exists, but I am certain of its existence.

So this kind of pollution makes 'park rangers' very angry...

Originally posted by Matyas
The real impact is environmental.

Matt, that's what I was going to say. Why screw up a perfectly virgin environment with it? Where's Greenpeace? UNEP? These guys better get their act together pronto!!

Seriously, environmental organizations should now start concentrating on preventing the use of planets as dumping grounds for toxic waste. And what IF there's some sort of microbial life there? It's going to be screwed up real bad, forever!

Oh well, who's bothered? At least not NASA/JPL. They're busy trying to play God!

[edit on 26-9-2007 by mikesingh]

reply to post by mikesingh


Pfft.. Environmentalists aren't even effective on our planet, what makes you think they'll be effective on a planet almost one light-hour away?

LMAO! Gravytrains pic! If terraforming is really an objective on another planet or moon in our solar system then instead of "Attempting" to destroy another planet to make its moons habitable, why not just pump Mars full Co2 and put a few trees on it? makes more sense. I don't know, I'm just a pitiful anonymous idiot.

reply to post by mikesingh


Well, there won't be much of an impact, long term - Pu238 has a half-life of about 88 years.

Not to mention, scattering that small of an amount through the slushy atmosphere of a gas giant you'd get what, about one atom per cubic foot?