NASA builds thermonuclear space engine
NASA and private companies by all means want to send humanity to Mars. The team of the University of Washington, funded by the space agency, in turn intends to develop a thermonuclear engine for this, which will be able to deliver a person to the Red Planet in 30 days, as well as to make other space travels possible.
“Using existing rocket fuel is almost impossible for humanity to explore something outside the Earth,” says lead researcher John Slog. “We hope to get enough energy to make interplanetary travel commonplace,”
The proposed Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR) is a 150-ton ship engine that uses magnetism to compress lithium or aluminum parts around a deuterium-tritium fuel core to initiate fusion. The resulting reaction force causes the substance to spray at a speed of 30 km / s, and it pushes the ship forward.
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Spent fuel is thrown behind the ship and since the whole process is based on magnetism, engine wear is minimal. At the same time pellets the size of a grain can provide the same amount of momentum as a gallon of rocket fuel.
All this requires electrical energy to control and maintain the reaction, but engineer Anthony Pancocky argues that the advantages of such a magnetic engine are that the spacecraft can only power itself with solar energy.
“It is very scalable — we can achieve a thermonuclear response on a much smaller scale,” he says. “We can start the engine created from a 200-kilowatt solar panel, i.e. about the same power that the ISS panels are generating now. ”
With the help of FDR, the flight time to Mars can be reduced to 30-90 days, compared with 8 months of flight on a "chemical" thrust. For a 30-day journey, it will take only three days for the engine to accelerate and another three days to slow it down in Mars orbit.
Such an engine will also be much cheaper at the acceleration stage than chemical rockets, since it requires much less fuel to overcome earth gravity. For the proposed 150-ton design, about a third can be taken by cargo, and a reduced flight time will also reduce the effect of radiation on astronauts.
Many space flights end up braking on the atmosphere to save fuel. The new drive, however, is so effective that such braking becomes meaningless, since the mass of protection will be greater than the mass of fuel consumed.
The team has tested all parts of the FDR in the laboratory and is now starting to build the engine as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which provides funding for long-term space programs. FDR is one of 10 projects that have reached the Second Stage. The FDR prototype will be created in the next year and a half, and they are hoping to create the finished ship by 2020 — but with increased funding, the timeframe can be reduced.
Given the tough economy of the US Government, this is unlikely, but the FDR may make chemical or ionic engines as obsolete as the steam engine now seems obsolete.
From the translator : Colleagues, errors are quite possible in terms, if something is wrong - write, I will gladly correct it.
“Using existing rocket fuel is almost impossible for humanity to explore something outside the Earth,” says lead researcher John Slog. “We hope to get enough energy to make interplanetary travel commonplace,”
The proposed Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR) is a 150-ton ship engine that uses magnetism to compress lithium or aluminum parts around a deuterium-tritium fuel core to initiate fusion. The resulting reaction force causes the substance to spray at a speed of 30 km / s, and it pushes the ship forward.
')
Spent fuel is thrown behind the ship and since the whole process is based on magnetism, engine wear is minimal. At the same time pellets the size of a grain can provide the same amount of momentum as a gallon of rocket fuel.
All this requires electrical energy to control and maintain the reaction, but engineer Anthony Pancocky argues that the advantages of such a magnetic engine are that the spacecraft can only power itself with solar energy.
“It is very scalable — we can achieve a thermonuclear response on a much smaller scale,” he says. “We can start the engine created from a 200-kilowatt solar panel, i.e. about the same power that the ISS panels are generating now. ”
With the help of FDR, the flight time to Mars can be reduced to 30-90 days, compared with 8 months of flight on a "chemical" thrust. For a 30-day journey, it will take only three days for the engine to accelerate and another three days to slow it down in Mars orbit.
Such an engine will also be much cheaper at the acceleration stage than chemical rockets, since it requires much less fuel to overcome earth gravity. For the proposed 150-ton design, about a third can be taken by cargo, and a reduced flight time will also reduce the effect of radiation on astronauts.
Many space flights end up braking on the atmosphere to save fuel. The new drive, however, is so effective that such braking becomes meaningless, since the mass of protection will be greater than the mass of fuel consumed.
The team has tested all parts of the FDR in the laboratory and is now starting to build the engine as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which provides funding for long-term space programs. FDR is one of 10 projects that have reached the Second Stage. The FDR prototype will be created in the next year and a half, and they are hoping to create the finished ship by 2020 — but with increased funding, the timeframe can be reduced.
Given the tough economy of the US Government, this is unlikely, but the FDR may make chemical or ionic engines as obsolete as the steam engine now seems obsolete.
From the translator : Colleagues, errors are quite possible in terms, if something is wrong - write, I will gladly correct it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/176227/
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