Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 1 November 2010, is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2010 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It covers fusion plasma physics, confinement methods, and propulsion concepts that use aneutronic fuels such as hydrogen and boron-11. It concludes that such thrusters may soon replace satellite ion thrusters. It also finds that they will not be practical beyond the solar system without breakthrough propulsion physics.
UNCLASSIFIED/FOR QSFIGJ0k W61i 8HLY Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion Summary Controlled fusion energy production has been under development for 60 years. The primary objective has been gaining the ability to create terrestrial power plants using deuterium and tritium as fuel. Unfortunately, this objective has been eluded for both technical and economic reasons. However, the threshold for achieving success in applying fusion to propulsion is considerably relaxed, especially if fuels are used that do not use tritium. Tritium has to be continuously bred; these reactions yield fast neutrons, which require shielding and cause structural materials to be periodically replaced. Such "aneutronic" fusion fuels, such as hydrogen fusing with Boron-11, have been studied extensively for space propulsion applications since the 1980s. This report reviews the basic fusion plasma physics, design concepts that apply aneutronic fusion for propulsion, and the requirements for transitioning to space. The predominant concepts studied include magnetic field reversed configuration, dense plasma focus and inertial electrostatic confinement. All of these concepts have venture capital funded programs for terrestrial fusion power. When applied to space or near-space propulsion, they can exceed the performance of any conventional electric thruster. The future technology development of aneutronic fusion propulsion will initially be motivated by the very large GEO satellites that will be developed in the next 20 years for commercial and military broadband communication. Further development of very-high-power propulsion systems (> 100 kW) to Mars and beyond will require major developments in all technology areas for confinement pulsed power and ion fuel beam accelerators. V UNCLASSIFIED/F8R 8FFICJ0P !IEE ANI Y
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.