https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-largest-nuclear-fusion-rocket-engine-begins-construction

Pulsar Fusion is a company founded by Richard Dinan. Those of you from the UK might know him from the TV show Made in Chelsea. This guy isn't an annoying reality TV star though, on the contrary, his company have a grand vision and their fusion rocket engine is now under construction.

Edited July 14, 20232 yr by martin-w

 

The particular type of engine we're talking about here is a Direct Fusion Drive (DFD), in which the charged particles create thrust directly, rather than converting into electricity. It's more efficient than other options, and as it's powered by atomic isotopes, doesn't need a huge fuel payload.

So they are expecting to successfully deliver nuclear fusion in a rocket in 4 years when 50+ years of fusion technology with complex experimental reactors on the ground has resulted in a grand total of, well.......nothing?

47 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

So they are expecting to successfully deliver nuclear fusion in a rocket in 4 years when 50+ years of fusion technology with complex experimental reactors on the ground has resulted in a grand total of, well.......nothing?

 

It's different Chris.

A fusion rocket isn't the same technological difficulty as attempting to generate an excess of power from a nuclear fusion power plant. 

Richard Dinan mentioned it in the video from 3:10. We can build fusion rockets well before a fusion power plant. 

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 20232 yr by martin-w

Pretty cool.  The actual propulsion here is essentially an ion thruster.  Some of the energy created by the fusion drive is siphoned off and used to electromagnetically accelerate charged particles to produce thrust.

The problem here is that ion thrusters are very weak at present.  It takes 1MW of power to produce 5-10 Newtons of thrust, a paltry amount and nowhere near enough to propel a large vehicle with people in it.

I don't know enough about this to speculate on its chances of success so I'll reserve judgement for now.

I certainly hope it is successful and I encourage further research into fusion and fusion-powered propulsion.

Dave