Word: superheater
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...speeds. But the stream of ions the engines produce is a thin one, and even a small ship requires a long time to accelerate--a problem when time is the very thing you're trying to limit. Another possibility is nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses a larger reactor to superheat traditional propellant and blast it out the engine nozzle. Things move a lot faster with such a system, but the engine as a whole is heavier and cruder and the big reactor causes jitters among environmentalists, who would just as soon see nothing nuclear aboard any rocket that could blow...
...many signs that solar's time is fast approaching. The community of Tennant Creek in northern Australia is scheduled to receive power soon from what is called a solar-thermal system. It will use a series of parabolic dishes to focus the sun's rays and superheat steam, which in turn will drive turbine generators. The designer, Stephen Kaneff of the Australian National University, calculates that these modest-size systems can produce power for as little as 4 cents per KW-H, cheaper than the polluting gas and diesel generators Tennant Creek now relies on. In California's Mojave Desert...
...were a building, it would fail inspection. Every year for five months virtually no rain falls. And every year from mid-September to November the weather system overhead jerks into reverse -- instead of blowing from the Pacific landward, it blows westward, from Utah to the sea. The winds superheat in the Mojave Desert. Then, in hundreds of canyons leading coastward from the mountains, they can accelerate up to 75 m.p.h. If California is lucky, the Santa Anas, as they are called, merely annoy, ushering in what author Joan Didion has called "the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread...
...Superheat from Princeton
...scientists thought they were putting superheat on the Carter Administration for more fusion funding, they were probably mistaken. John Deutch, the Department of Energy's research chief, pointedly noted that while the Princeton work was gratifying, it was not a "breakthrough." Thus the Administration remains tilted more toward conservation and coal, less toward advanced research, however exciting...