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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Figure 7 shows the circuit of an ordinary Marx generator, and Figure 8 that of a Super
Marx. An artist's view of a mile-long Super Marx generator, charged up by about 100
ordinary Marx generators and connected to the chamber in which the thermonuclear
target is placed, is shown in Figures 9-11.
Marx Banks In Off lanl<s with HighVoltoge C.podtim
Figure 10. Detailed View of a Section of the Super
Marx Generator. Two conventional Marx banks charge
up one coaxial capacitor/transmission line element to 10
MV.
As shown in Figure 12, the Super Marx is made up of a cha in of co-axial capacitors with
a dielectric that has to withstand the potential difference of 107 volts between the inner
and outer conductor.
Figure 11. Injection of GeV - 10 MA Proton Beam.
Drawn From Super Marx generator made up of
magnetical ly insulated coaxial capacitors int o chamber
with cylindrical deuterium target.
~ • • • • • • ,.M
• • • • • • ~
8 ►
- -+ s + \, + \, t
C \5°" \,°"
°" °"
-
JJif /Jell JJif JJd
- -+ + + + +
8 ►
X X X X X xix X X X X X X
Figure 12. Showing a Few Elements of the Super Marx Generator
Following their charging up of the Super Marx generator, the Marx generators are
disconnected from the Super Marx. If the capacitors of the Super Marx can hold their
charge long enough, this can be done by mechanical switches.
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