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back to the future - Does the BttF time travel require fuel/power?


After seeing this question about the time-travelling range of the DeLorean, the consensus was that it was merely restricted by the controls (a 4 digit number, giving it a range of 0-9999).


However, the goal of Back to the Future 1 was to give the Flux Capacitor enough (electrical) power to function correctly; at the end of BttF 2, when Doc Brown arrives and tells him he needs to go to the future, he starts rooting through the trash for fuel; and then in BttF 3, the gas tank gets punctured, (effectively) stranding them in the past.


So my question is - does the time travel require "fuel"? Or is it just for the driving around town?



Answer



From what I'm seeing in this article: http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion yes fuel is needed for time travel. As the article states



the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor converted household waste to power the time machine's flux capacitor and time circuits using nuclear fusion. (It is thought that this is cold fusion.) Mr. Fusion allowed the DeLorean time machine to generate the required 1.21 gigawatts to travel through the space-time continuum. The energy produced by Mr. Fusion replaced plutonium as the primary power source of the DeLorean's time travel and flight capabilities.



But if you recall in the first movie, the flux capacitor was powered by plutonium, not the petroleum fuel of the DeLorean. But technically the car's gas tank would also be required for time travel in that it would need to give the De Lorean enough momentum to reach 88mph and thus travel through time.



This is why in the 3rd movie Doc comes up with an alternate method of accelerating the vehicle fast enough to reach that speed. Internal combustion engines powered by petroleum fuel were still a few decades away in the Wild West.


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