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To Mars in 30 days, on nuclear fusion

By Mark Halper | April 12, 2013, 3:51 AM PDT

To Mars and beyond. A rendition of the Fusion Driven Rocket.

The common knock against nuclear fusion is that it has remained 40 years away ever since physicists started promoting it in the 1950s.

Judging by the snail’s pace at large multi-billion intergovernmental fusion projects like ITER in France and NIF in California, that could well be the case.

But as I’ve written often, chances are that at least one of the growing number of private projects chasing the elusive fusion goalwill probably crack it first.

And it may not be that the first fusion machine goes to work generating electricity. Rather, it could serve as a propulsion device such as the one that John Slough is building to take spacecraft to Mars.

Slough runs Redmond, Wash.-based space propulsion firm MSNW LLC, is a research associate professor at the University of Washington, and has funding from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

He thinks his Fusion Driven Rocket can help travelers reach the Red Planet in as little as 30 days. For comparison, the Curiosity took over eight months before landing on Mars last August. NASA estimates that with current technology, it would take humans four years to complete a round trip, and the launch alone would cost $12 billion in rocket fuel.

“Using existing rocket fuels, it’s nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth,” Slough said in a UW press release. “We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace.”

Like the behemoth contraptions at ITER and NIF, Slough is trying to fuse atoms - presumably hydrogen isotopes - to release energy. But he is engineering an entirely different, and much smaller device in which lithium metal rings collapse around plasma encased in a magnetic field, causing fusion and propelling a craft forward.

Slough hopes to start tests by the end of the summer. He likes fusion so much he’s working on two machines at once. His other one, at Redmond-based Helion Energy, will be geared at generating electricity. Why not send one to Mars to support a community there once the Fusion Driven Rockets start arriving?

Image from University of Washington

Other fusion projects, on SmartPlanet:

For a SmartPlanet archive of nuclear alternatives including fusion and fission, click here.

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About Mark Halper

Mark Halper is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

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Rated

Workable idea

Posted by Leithauser@...

12th Apr

Just
In

He was first with this idea.

Posted by JTF243@...

23rd Apr

Show:

+3Votes

Workable idea

The reason that this could succeed while other fusion projects have failed is that it eliminates the biggest problems with nuclear fusion: containment and converting energy to electricity. In this case you do not want to contain the fuel, you want it to be expelled to produce thrust, and you are not bothering to convert the energy of the reaction to any other form of energy. You just want the energy to be blasted out the back as kinetic energy of the fuel.

Posted by Leithauser@...

12th Apr

+1Vote

There's no free lunch in physics

From where will come the energy to keep the system running?
I think it will be needed converting at least some fusion energy into electricity to sustain the system. And without containment, it is hard to get a respectful fusion rate to achieve a net gain. I believe a better option will be a colliding-beam fusion reactor with closed fuel cycle to make plasma much denser and increase fusion rate to power indirectly electric thrusters.http://youtu.be/VUrt186pWoA

Posted by rbrtwjohnson

12th Apr

0Votes

I don't give a damn!!

I am 73 years old. I'm still interested in everything, and continue to build...first one project and then another. Sometimes, I fail, because I have no help, and at my age, I find that people seem to discount any of my wants, or ambitions. When is someone going to do something to provide me with the energy independence, I need to power my own projects, when the power company fails. Who really cares about going to Mars, when they are still struggling to maintain, at home, without going anywhere? I need something simple such as a plastic film I can apply to my windows, that will generate electricity. Yeah, I know I'm dreaming. No one wants people to be independent, they just want willing, contributing slaves. Sure, I know someone is working on it, but we will never get it, unless they can figure out a way to force us to continue to pay them.

Posted by laidbackrebel

12th Apr

-4Votes

fusion space travel

are we now going to pollute space and our sister plants with nuclear waste?

Posted by smartplanet4442

12th Apr

+1Vote

Fusion doesn't pollute

Technically, if they can ever invent a genuine fusion reactor that puts out more energy than you put into it (right now just a gleam in a physicist's eye), there will be no pollution, unless you consider helium as pollution!

Theoretically, fusion does not pollute the way that fission does, and as for spacecraft with traditional nuclear fission reactors, we've been launching them for years. They are only ever a problem when they fall back to Earth!

Posted by omb00900@...

12th Apr

+1Vote

ITER irradiates its containment with neutrons

Wikipedia's article on the international thermonuclear experiment ITER includes the statement that "A related problem for a future commercial fusion power plant is that the neutron bombardment will induce radioactivity in the reactor material itself", because a great deal of the energy of the fusion reaction is carried by neutrons, 14 MeV each! The containment vessel therefore has a limited lifetime, after which IT IS radioactive nuclear waste. The design of the IFR and LFTR breeder fission reactors takes into account the far smaller degradation of structure in the fuel itself, caused by the fission reaction and the decay of the fission products.

Posted by SmartAlbert

13th Apr

+1Vote

LOL

Compared to the particles in the solar wind and cosmic rays I don't think this will be an issue in that regard.

Posted by riverat1

15th Apr

0Votes

Exit Planet Earth

Humanity's effort to save our own planet is doomed, but we will find a way to exit this one and screw up the next one...

Posted by threeconsulting

12th Apr

-2Votes

I Do Hope It Wont Carry Humans

The idea that private companies are equipped, what with lawyers and proprietary secrecy and all, to succeed wher whole countries have failed in major scientific enterprises is either ludicrous or terrifying. I suspect that this daft idea includes human passengers. If so, the weight of the necessary neutron and gamma ray shielding is likely to make it a no-go.
There was a moderately plausible version of this, perhaps I read it in Freeman Dyson's work. Your spaceship has an ablation shield, behind which for propulsion you set off a series of thermonuclear explsions. We know how to do these.
But human space travel isn't a good idea until human civilization has a world government that can punish evildoers like Stalin, Hitler, and any world leader that has the power to murder whole cities with nuclear weapons.

Posted by SmartAlbert

Updated - 13th Apr

0Votes

Mars via Fusion

Why are there solar panels on a fusion rocket to Mars? Artistic oops?

Our first Mars mission was 1990. Our fusion R&D started before 1960. In 1960, as a grad student in the Stanford Plasma Physics group, I heard group scientists agree that fusion was "20 years away".

In 2010, the group reassembled for a 50th reunion. The new agreement? Fusion is "30 years away".

Thankfully, fission powers our present Mars rover via the Plutonium isotope Pu238, giving decay heat to thermoelectric generators. Pu238 is bred vi neutrons in fission reactors.

And, small fission reactors can even drive spacecraft, if we wish. Fusion? Hmmmm.

Posted by DrAlexC

13th Apr

0Votes

He was first with this idea.

Robert Heinlein was a scientist before he was a writer and he was writing about nuclear-powered spacecraft back in the '50's. His design, called a "torchship", looked like a giant golfball on a "tee". The top of the "tee" was the radiation shield to protect the ship and its occupants but he was using a fission reactor. Every bit on non-recyclable material was used for fuel as all they did was turn that waste into plasma and vent it out of the base of the "tee" as reaction mass. How much and how long lived the radiation in the ship's wake would be is the question. As the material would be a gaseous plasma and having been in the reactor's core for such a short time, it probably wouldn't be a problem.

The big advantage was you didn't have to have a specific fuel and the continuous thrust of the plasma would boost the torchship to near-relatavistic velocities while maintaining a 0.75-1 G (gravity) environment for the plants and crew. The only time without thrust, other than departure and arrival, would be the midpoint of the trip when the ship had to flip 180 degrees to start decelerating.

Posted by JTF243@...

23rd Apr

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Monday, August 26, 2013

To Mars in 30 days, on nuclear fusion