AAWSAP DIRD, Advanced Nuclear Propulsion for Manned Deep Space Missions, March 2010

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document is dated 11 March 2010. It was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office as part of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It is a technical paper arguing that spacecraft driven by deuterium thermonuclear reactions could be built with current science and could reach the outer solar system. It covers magnetic insulation, ignition by proton beams, a Super Marx generator and conjectured chemical superexplosives. It does not discuss any UFO sightings.

From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/11/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD examines advanced nuclear propulsion for crewed deep-space travel and argues that human missions beyond the Moon would require propulsion systems with both very high thrust and very high specific impulse, which the author contends are difficult to achieve with conventional chemical, nuclear-thermal, and nuclear-electric systems. The report focuses on concepts derived from Project Orion, the discontinued General Atomics nuclear pulse propulsion study sponsored first by ARPA and later by the U.S. Air Force between 1958 and 1965, in which a spacecraft would be driven by repeated nuclear explosions. In this case, the DIRD emphasizes small non-fission-triggered fusion explosions using deuterium, magnetic mirrors, and other unconventional ignition concepts intended to avoid the inefficiencies associated with small fission devices. It presents these ideas as a possible pathway to crewed missions across the solar system, while also linking them to broader visions of long-range human expansion into space. The document is exploratory in character and depends on several unproven ignition methods, enabling technologies, and engineering assumptions. Overall, it is a theoretical examination of fusion-based pulse propulsion concepts rather than as a documentary account of a technology nearing practical realization.

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Because the 6 charged fusion products are accompanied by 9 electrons, they have to
share their kinetic energy with 9 electrons. This reduces the maximum specific impulse
by the factor .J(6+9)/6 =m to ~ = 0.95 x 109cm/s.
A reduction of the specific impulse does not occur if the electrons have enough time to
escape the burning plasma behind the detonation front; that is, in a time shorter than
the time for them to be heated by the charged fusion products.
The time needed for the electrons to be heated by the charged fusion reaction products
can be computed from the range Ao of the charged fusion products and their velocity v
in a plasma at the temperature T. For the He4 fusion products, the range is given by
(kT) 312
Ao= _a_ . - , a = 2.S x 1034 [cgs] (8)
n
This time is
' = Ao = a(kT) 312 (9)
v nv
It then has to be compared with the time the electron can escape the burning plasma
behind the detonation front, given by
(10)
where ro is the rad ius of the burning deuterium cylinder, and ve the electron velocity.
One thus has
t e,c V nr0
- = ----------
T Ve a(kT)312 (11)
Putting n = 1023 cm-3 , T ~ 108 K with Ve~ 109 cm/s, V~109 cm/s, one finds tescl-r~
2.5 'o . Therefore, tesc < r requires that 'o < 0.4 cm.
To reach the highest specific impu lse possib le, one should make the deuterium cylinder
as thin as possible.
Magnetic Entrapment of the Charged Fusion Products and
the Stopping of the Proton Beam in Dense Deuterium
If a fission bomb is used to trigger a thermonuclear detonation, so much energy is
available that almost any radiation implosion configuration is likely going to work. As an
example, one may place a fission bomb and a sphere of solid deuterium in a shell of
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