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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • I think they mean the “superheavy” (somehow a more stupid name than starship) booster rocket is the most powerful. I’m pretty sure by thrust metrics it is. It’s just that the superheavy-starship system can’t put much up in LEO because the starship is huge and heavy on its own.

    If you put an expendable second stage on top of the superheavy booster instead of a starship it could put a lot more up to LEO.


  • I’d argue that it wasn’t really “net-positive”. Certainly it was a positive energy gain, but it took way more energy to create the fusion than just the input energy. There is a ton of efficiency losses to create the input energy, which is defined by the energy in the laser beam that triggers the fusion. A lot of energy is also used to maintain confinement during the reaction.

    I would like the term net positive to be more inclusive of all of the recurring energy used to support the fusion. It’s fair to not include the energy used to construct the machines, but anything that would need to be put in to a fusion plant each reaction to get out energy should be considered.