I thought the Fusion Drive plume also came up - but perhaps I’m thinking of a different book?
At the accelerations most sci-fi happens at (even fractions of 1G), the energy coming out the business end of any sort of drive based on extrapolations of currently known physics are going to be in the TJ+ range, and often with relativistic particle velocities.
Probably not as focused as a laser type drive, but in a vacuum such a fusion type drive would melt any known materials at multi-km distances and likely cause extreme x-ray emissions from whatever it was vaporizing when it came in contact with it. In atmosphere, it would likely just vaporize the space craft along with anything in a several mile radius.
It’s basically carrying around a directable, continuously exploding hydrogen bomb.
At the accelerations most sci-fi happens at (even fractions of 1G), the energy coming out the business end of any sort of drive based on extrapolations of currently known physics are going to be in the TJ+ range, and often with relativistic particle velocities.
Probably not as focused as a laser type drive, but in a vacuum such a fusion type drive would melt any known materials at multi-km distances and likely cause extreme x-ray emissions from whatever it was vaporizing when it came in contact with it. In atmosphere, it would likely just vaporize the space craft along with anything in a several mile radius.
It’s basically carrying around a directable, continuously exploding hydrogen bomb.