themolosis thruster

By controling the heating of water to near thermolisis temperatures and great pressures, the water could contact a catalyst seperate into.hydrogen and oxygen and recombine in a thrust nozzle. At first I was thinking thermite, but ground based laser power would make a very light, water powered reusable engine spacecraft.

The seperation into hydrogen into water is unneccisary, and a loss of energy. You just have to superheat it into steam, but if you want to put extra energy in, electrolyze, and ionize it so it can be accellerated into plasmas (Protons, and electron heavy oxygen), then accellerate that out an anode, and cathode. The best Anode would be a partical accellerator for the proton, which would ballance the charge, and let it neutralize into wateer vapor somewhere behind the craft. I'd probably run the Anode gun down the center of a nozzle shaped cathode so the oxygen, and ozone could exert pressure, and raise the efficiency. Water's heavy, though, and at a low energy state, so requires a lot of energy to break it apart before you start accellerating it, so it would be extremely high drain, and low mass fraction.