The "Crown of Nobles" Noble Gas Tube Display (2024)(theshamblog.com) |
The "Crown of Nobles" Noble Gas Tube Display (2024)(theshamblog.com) |
More specifically, for a given exhaust velocity and grid spacing, the space charge limited thrust density (thrust/area) of an ion engine scales as the square of the mass/charge ratio of the ions. So you really want heavy singly charged ions. This is completely unlike thermal rockets, where you want low molecular weight exhaust gases.
Plasma engines that accelerate a quasi-neutral plasma aren't subject to space charge limits, but even there heavy ions help because they reduce the energy used in ionizing the propellant per unit propellant mass.
[0]https://sci.esa.int/web/bepicolombo/-/60642-bepicolombo-mtm-...
The BepiColombo number is similar, I think, to the amount of xenon made annually in nuclear reactors (where it occurs in spent fuel as the result of fission.)
About the only place I can think of in a plasma engine where you'd want to use light elements is if the engine is thermal: making a confined plasma, heating it to very high temperature, then expanding it through a magnetic nozzle. There, you'd want to use hydrogen to minimize radiative losses from the hot plasma, especially vs. using a plasma containing partially ionized atoms of higher atomic number elements; these can radiate fiercely.
I'll get my coat
People have be filling it with different gasses to get different colors.
1. This puts out a fair amount of UVC light. Most people are not familiar with this hazard because the atmosphere filters it, but even a modest flux can degrade your eye lenses and give you cataracts. Get a set of safety glasses that explicitly say they block UVC if playing with this for more than a minute or two cumulative. Normally you would use borosilicate glass to filter it, but I would not trust these to use anything other than the cheapest materials.
2. The hazard is "high voltage" but it is 1 MHz, not DC. Conventional wisdoms on DC high voltage insulation isn't sufficient. You need RF safety guidance. If you get your finger within about an inch of the terminals the air will break down and turn your skin into a 50W load. It will smell a lot like burnt plastic, but it is your skin that's been burned. Treat these with respect. They are inherently unsafe because they do not have engineering controls to keep touches away from dangerous locations: a knife with no handle.
In case anyone's wondering: no these aren't really above the level but few enough people are getting hurt and [insert your preferred explanation why society doesn't meet demands] that nothing happens.
Be safe, have fun.
I don't blame the maintainer, though, I think it's a very understandable reaction to close the PR.
With Radon it might even be conceivably possible (not sure how hard it is to get and if any restrictions apply because of its radioactivity), and it would work for a few years, because it has a half-life of 3.825 days (EDIT: this is of course complete nonsense, the "." is a decimal point, so it will only work for a few days). In the quantities needed for a gas tube (and as long as it stays in the tube!), I guess it should also be relatively safe, but I'm not an expert. Apparently it produces red light when used in a tube. Oganesson however has a half-life of 0.7 ms, so, aside from how expensive it would be to synthesize enough of it, it's doesn't stay around long enough for any experiments...
In a year the radon would've undergone about a hundred halvings, so around one 10^30th of the original radon nuclei would be left. Which is to say, almost certainly zero. One mole worth of radon would've decayed down to the last atom after less than 300 days (mostly to lead-210, which would then comparatively slowly decay to stable lead-206 with a half-life of about 22 years).
Having the AI do all the easy grunt work removes that ability.
In practice I think a combination of argon and CO2 is typically used for inert gas welding of steel.