To reduce the radiation hazard for manned missions to Mars and beyond, a high-specific-impulse–high-thrust system is needed, with a nuclear bomb propulsion system the preferred candidate. The propulsion with small fission bombs is excluded because the critical mass requirement leads to extravagant small fission burnup rates. This leaves open the propulsion with nonfission ignited thermonuclear microexplosions, with a compact fusion microexplosion igniter (driver) and no large radiator. It should not depend on the rare He 3 isotope and only requires a small amount of tritium. This excludes lasers for ignition. With megaamperes of gigavolt proton beams and a small amount of tritium, cylindrical deuterium targets can be ignited. The proton beams are generated by discharging the entire spacecraft as a magnetically insulated gigavolt capacitor. To avoid a large radiator, needed to remove the heat from the absorption of the fast neutrons in the spacecraft, the microexplosion is surrounded by a thick layer of liquid hydrogen, stopping the neutrons and heating the hydrogen to a temperature of 10 5 K , which as a fully ionized plasma can be repelled from the spacecraft by a magnetic mirror.


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    Title :

    To Mars in Weeks by Thermonuclear Microbomb Propulsion


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2014-11-01




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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