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.

UNCLASSIFIED/ /Pelt err1e1J11t l!ISl!!! eHt'I
l > le (15)
where le = Sa. In Table 2, the values for a and le for all the charged fusion products of
the DD reaction are compiled. For all of them, the critical current is below l e = 3.84
x 106 A. Therefore, with the choice l ~ 107 A, all the charged fusion products are
entrapped inside the deuterium cylinder.
Table 2. Critical Ignition Currents for Thermonuclear Reactions
Reaction Fusion Product Energy [MeV] a [G cm] le [A]
DT He4 3.6 2. 7 x 10:i 1.35 X 10°
DD He5 0.8 l.12 x 10:, 5.6 x 105
DD T 1.0 2.5 x 10:i 1.25 X 10°
DD H 3.0 2.5 x 10"' 1.25 X 10°
DHe3 H 14.65 5.56 x 105 3.84x 106
DHe5 He4 3.66 2.78 x 10:i 1.39 x 10°
For the argon ion laser configuration proposed for the launch into Earth orbit, where a
small amount of DT serves as a trigger for the ignition of a larger amount of deuterium,
the ign ition of a magnetic field supported detonation wave in deuterium is possible
there with an aux iliary high-explosive-driven megampere current generator, setting up
an axial magnetic field, by an azimuthal current around the rod. The charged fusion
products there are spiraling down the rod. The current needed to entrap the charged
fusion products are there on the same order of magnitude; that is, ~ 107 A.
For the deuterium-tritium thermonuclear reaction, the condition for a propagating burn
in a sphere of radius rand density p, heated to a temperature of 108 K, is given by
pr ~ l g/cm 2 . This requires energy of about 1 megajoule (MJ). For the deuterium
reaction, this condition is pr~ 10 g/cm 2, with an ignition temperature about 10 times
larger. That a thermonuclear detonation in deuterium is possible at all is due to the
secondary combustion of the T and He3 DD fusion reaction products (Reference 8). The
energy required would be about 104 times larger, or about 104 MJ-for all practical
purposes out of reach for nonfission ignition. However, if the ignition and burn are
along a deuterium cyl inder, where the charged fusion products are entrapped by a
magnetic field within the cylinder, the condition pr~ 10 g/cm 2 is replaced by
pz ~10 g/cm 2 (16)
where z is the length of the cylinder.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /felt 8ffl@IAI: W&li 8Ptl:¥
8