>>14221769>But what?No idea, there are people far smarter than me that SHOULD be working on this.
>meaningfully better in terms of cost effectivenessDoesn't even have to be better, just "as good" or "slightly worse" if it removes some of the weaknesses of traditional boilers.
Consider a "spaceship":
>Cooling is a problem in space so no boiler tech (no boiler (no matter how fancy), so you can't use hot steam to turn the turbine)>No wind either so you can't use the wind to turn the turbine>Solar is decent for (very small) orbiting stations but it ain't gonna power an actual spaceship (>100 people in it)Which means that we need some way of producing "good enough" electrical energy with as little heat as possible.
I think the main problem is simply the direction of the research. We are still too focused on energy production intended for earth (where we can cool stuff better, have plenty of materials to be used as fuel and we need to produce absolutely massive amounts of power for huge population). If energy production research was focused and financed in the direction of space then we might be able to come up with some actually new shit. After all, if you aren't forced to think outside the box you'll just stagnate.
