Fusion boffins apply plasma know-how to building thrusters UK boffins have used smarts gained through the development of fusion technology to fire up a thruster with the purpose of eventually cutting interplanetary travel times. The UK-based Pulsar Fusion team showed off the thruster last month, a slightly alarming ring of plasma burning at millions of degrees in a vacuum chamber, …
I always wondered if something very much like an IEC fusor could be used for this.
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2018-0002
Seems my reasoning was correct, the beam would be very energetic but using the Pulsar approach may well be more efficient though for certain applications the IEC may work.
Impulse drive versus thrusters.
But they're proposing cutting the 9 month journey in half, when we have designs that will straight up cut travel time to 4 to 6 weeks. That we could build and launch with today's technologies.
It's called NERVA. Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications. And while some Nerva designs are T/W > 1, none of the mission designs made ever featured a fuelled Nuclear rocket being launched, they were all intended to launch the nuclear rocket, propellant and nuclear fuel in separate launches for payload mass and safety reasons. Once fuelled the rocket would make multiple trips to Mars and back, only needing new propellant and payloads.
And just for the sake of completeness let me mention the original Project Orion - a 3000 tonne space craft launched from earth by nuclear bombs, with fusion being a significant portion of the energy budget.
Even post-comprehensive test ban treaty we could use it anywhere outside the Earths magnetosphere with little impact on human health.
TLDR - no.
But the lab experiments show promise in both fusion technology (the sustained containment of a plasma) and thruster technology (the controlled emissions of high energy particle beams).
Right now it's just a man with a plan and the video clearly shows that. But I am hopeful that a prototype can be developed and tested in a real world application.
Here's to the boffins and the dream.
I worked a while for a waferfab equipment manufacturer, where plasma etching and deposition were both used for key steps in microchip manufacture. My happy tasks were RF power matching into the plasmas and RFI suppression of the bloody consequences. First thing I did with all the design engineers was remind them (tactfully) of their GCSE physics, 'cos electromagnetism knows more dirty tricks than were dreamed of in their philosophies.
One thing I will say; these processes are all inherently grossly inefficient. If your chamber walls don't get eaten away then they will get crudded up. Get the balance perfect and half gets eaten and spat back out to crud up the other half. "Joy unbounded" as the late Stanley Holloway would say, "absolume tremedoso magnifamble in the practicauiflower" or similar.
This happy-slappy chappie reckons he can get all the way to Mars. Not relying on his plasma thruster for maximum warp he won't, Captain. He'll burn most of a Saturn V lifting his power supply to where he can switch on the leccy without falling backwards, then he'll find he is limited to sending the ship's cat in Starbug's escape capsule (ain't it th' truth, Mister Lister, Sir?) Oh, and wouldn't it be nice if he could get the cat back again, too? I have a soft spot for Danny John-Jules...
ISP = Specific impulse, not internet service provider.
It's a measure or rocket fuel economy.
For example the Dawn probe, which rendezvoused with Ceres and Vesta asteroids, had thrusters with a specific impulse of 3,100 s and produce a thrust of 90 mN.
Without ISP numbers, it's just a press release.
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