Fusion Rocket Could Take Us To Mars

New submitter imikem writes "University of Washington researchers and scientists at a Redmond-based space-propulsion company are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks. 'Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth,' said lead researcher John Slough, a UW research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics. 'We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace.' 'The research team has developed a type of plasma that is encased in its own magnetic field. Nuclear fusion occurs when this plasma is compressed to high pressure with a magnetic field. The team has successfully tested this technique in the lab. Only a small amount of fusion is needed to power a rocket – a small grain of sand of this material has the same energy content as 1 gallon of rocket fuel.'"

Comments

Re:nuclear fusion?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Worth noting, is that this concept is essentially the Orion engine without the heavy radioactives - the idea is essentially what we do in the hydrogen bomb.

Re:nuclear fusion?

[Waffle Iron]

High-speed ions would actually be easier and more efficient to use for generating electricity than conventional thermal energy. You set up an opposing electric field with a voltage that corresponds to the ions' energy in MeV, and capture them once they've slowed down. This creates a direct electric current at that high voltage, without the need for Carnot cycles, steam equipment, heat exchangers, etc.

One of the attractions of aneutronic fusion is that most of the energy is released in the form of charged ions that can be harnessed in this way.

This type of fusion was worked on 35 years ago

[InterGuru]

The Trisops machine at the University of Miami.

Trisops was an experimental machine for the study of magnetic confinement of plasmas with the ultimate goal of producing fusion power. The configuration was a variation of a compact toroid, a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) structure of plasma and magnetic fields with no coils penetrating the center. It lost funding in its original form in 1978.
The configuration was produced by combining two individual toroids produced by two conical pinch guns, located at either end of a length of Pyrex pipe with a constant magnetic guide field. The toroidal currents in the toroids were in opposite directions, so that they repelled each other. After coming to an equilibrium, they were adiabatically compressed by increasing the external field.

Disclosure: I am one of the authors of the cited paper in the article and the author of the above Wikipedia article

Re:Yuh huh

[X0563511]

Lets not forget that the objective of the rocket is to move you, not generate usable energy. You don't necessarily have to have a net+ for this to be useful.

Think of it as a super high density fuel that just takes a lot of energy on the ground to process.