Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 11 March 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It argues that spaceships powered by deuterium thermonuclear reactions could be built with current science and technology. The paper covers ignition by GeV proton beams, magnetic insulation, the Super Marx generator and conjectured chemical superexplosives, and it concludes that such craft could make manned exploration of the entire solar system possible.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /P9R: 9PPll!ltllt '11815 &n•tY For E1, =5xl0 14erg, M 0 =104 g, and setting for v = 10 km/s = 106 cm/s the escape velocity from Earth, one finds that N ~ 10. Assuming an efficiency of 10 percent, about 100 !-kiloton explosions would therefore be needed. Neutron Entrapment in an Autocatalytic Thermonuclear Detonation Wave - a Means to Increase the Specific Impulse and to Solve the Large Radiator Problem The principal reason why neutrons released by thermonuclear reactions pose such a serious problem is that they cannot be repelled from the spacecraft by a magnetic field. However, choosing a neutron-absorbing target as shown in Figure 3, one can reduce the flux of neutrons hitting the spacecraft. Besides inflicting material damage on the spacecraft, the neutrons release heat that must be removed by a very large radiator. The idea of the autocatalytic thermonuclear detonation wave (Reference 13) presents a solution, which if feasible would very much reduce the magnitude of this problem. For its implementation, it requires very large bremsstrahlung flux densities in the burn zone behind the thermonuclear detonation front. Such large bremsstrahlung flux densities will occur in deuterium detonation burn, at the highest temperature for all the thermonuclear reactions. In an autocatalytic thermonuclear detonation, explained in Figure 6, soft X-rays generated through the burn of the thermonuclear plasma behind the detonation front compress the still unburned thermonuclear fuel ahead of the front. The increase in the fuel density, both in the Teller-Ulam configuration and in the autocatalytic thermonuclear detonation wave, is of crucial importance, with the reaction rate proportional to the square of the density. ~ - ~l.:> I·· ~ L Figure 6. Autocatalytic Thermonuclear Detonation Using a Soft X-ray Precursor From the Burn Zone BZ to Precompress the Thermonuclear Fuel TF Ahead of the Detonation Front DF. The soft x-rays travel through the gap G between the tamp T and the liner L. 18 UNCLASSIFIED//F&II. &FFUiiliR.k Wliilii a,11,~·
Not linked to a story yet.
Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 37 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.