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Americium: How a small element could power the next century of space exploration
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Technology
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Sterling Engines are usually piston driven, no? I’ll admit, I’m not up to snuff on alternative designs of the Sterling engine.
Magnetically aligned or not, you still have to seal the piston to the chamber to stop blow-by. Friction and lubrication would still come into play, wouldn’t it?
And Stirling engines run on gases, so the contraption would have to be sealed. Not insurmountable, and I love me some Stirling engine... IANAE but it seems a challenging choice for a device which hopes up run for decades or a century.
Not necessarily. You don't actually need the fluid to be perfectly sealed out, just slowed down a lot. This means that you could run it open but with very close tolerances and there would be almost no leakage. You just need to make the gap small enough for the leakage to be trivial.
As for magnetic alignment, that is all about maintaining smooth operation without losing efficiency to friction. Instead of a guide with friction you could use magnetic attraction to keep things aligned.