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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, prepared in fiscal year 2010 by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program, reviews aneutronic fusion as a way to propel spacecraft. It compares chemical, ion, fission, fusion and antimatter propulsion, and it also covers radiation shielding and relativistic rocket calculations. It looks at research needs over the next 30 years for missions from low Earth orbit to Mars, Jupiter and Alpha Centauri.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/1/10, 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 surveys aneutronic fusion as a possible advanced space-propulsion method, focusing on fusion reactions that release most of their energy in charged particles rather than neutrons and therefore offer potential advantages over more neutron-intensive fusion concepts, especially in radiation shielding, direct energy conversion, and thrust generation. The report reviews the underlying rocket physics, compares candidate fusion fuels and ignition conditions, and gives particular attention to proton-boron and related schemes, while also discussing Bussard’s concepts and other fusion projects as representative development paths. It also makes clear that the central obstacle remains ignition and sustained net-energy fusion under practical conditions, and it notes additional problems such as x-ray energy losses from the hot plasma, extreme temperature requirements, and the gap between theoretical specific impulse and what proposed systems had demonstrated experimentally. Overall, the document presents aneutronic fusion propulsion as an attractive long-range concept for deep-space travel, but one whose practical realization still depended on major unresolved advances in fusion engineering.
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UNCLASSIFIED//POlt Offl@IAL HS& QptkY Appendix E: Endnotes 1 U. S. Department of Energy, "Nevada Test Site History: Nuclear Rocket Development Station," DOE/NV 707-Rev 1, June 2004. 2 R. W. Bussard and L. W. Jameson, "From SSTO to Saturn's Moons: Superperformance Fusion Propulsion for Practical Spaceflight," 30th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA 94-3269, 27-29 June, 1994. 3 Inertial-Electrostatic-Fusion Propulsion Spectrum: Air-Breathing to Interstellar Fl ight, R. W. Bussard and L. W. Jameson, Journal of Propulsion and Power, v. 11, no. 2, pp. 365- 372. • Anderson, John D., Modern Compressible Flow, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2003. s VASIMR 6 Foster, Arthur R., and Wright, Robert L., Basic Nuclear Engineering, 4th edition, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1983. 7 Schultis, J. K., and Faw, R. F., Radiation Shielding, American Nuclear Society (ANS), 2000. s Duderstadt, James J., and Hamilton, Louis J., Nuclear Reactor Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, 1976. 9 Voegeli, N., "Space Nuclear Reactors: History and Emerging Policy Issues," The Nonproliferation Review, vol. 14, issue 1, pp. 163-175, March 2007. 1° Forward, R. L., "Advanced Space Propulsion Study - Antiproton and Beamed Power Propulsion," AFAL TR-87-070, 1997. 11 General Dynamics Corporation, "Nuclear Pulse Vehicle Study Condensed Summary Report, NTIS 1976006593, January, 1964. 12 "Nuclear pulse propulsion," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear pulse propulsion , 7/17/2010. 13 R. W. Bussard, "Fusion as Electric Propulsion," Journal of Propulsion and Power, v. 6, no. 5, pp. 567-574, Sept-Oct, 1990. L4 R. W. Bussard and L. W. Jameson, "From SSTO to Saturn's Moons: Superperformance Fusion Propulsion for Practical Spaceflight," 30th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA 94-3269, 27-29 June, 1994. t s Inertial-Electrostatic-Fusion Propulsion Spectrum: Air-Breathing to Interstellar Flight, R. W. Bussard and L. W. Jameson, Journal of Propulsion and Power, v. 11, no. 2, pp. 365-372. 16 R. W. Bussard, "System Technical and Economic Features of QED-Engine-Driven Space Transportation," 33rd AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, AIAA 97-3071, 6-9 July, 1997. 11 Bussard, Robert, "The Advent of Clean Nuclear Fusion: Su performance Space Power and Propulsion,'1 57th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2006), pp. 1-14, 2006. 18 http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/~ifs/neep533 lect32 99 fusionProp.html , University of Wisconsin, Madison, NEEP 533, Fusion Propulsion, Lecture #32. 19 E. Sanger, (1953) "Zur Theorie der Photonraketen," Ingenieur-Archiv, Band 21, pp. 213 - 226 (in German). 20 E. Sanger, "Photon propulsion," in Handbook of Astronautical Engineering, First Edition, H. H. Koelle (Ed.), McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961. 21 Irene Klotz (August 7, 2008). "Plasma Rocket May Be Tested at Space Station" . Discovery News. http ://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/07/plasma-rocket.html. Retrieved August 10, 2010. 41 UNCLASSIFIED/fF&A 9FFI€il.t.k Y&li QptkY
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 50 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.