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Fusion Rocket Engines for Planetary Defense

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Fusion Rocket Engines for Planetary Defense J Fusion Energ (2016) 35:123–133 DOI 10.1007/s10894-015-0034-1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH A New Vision for Fusion Energy Research: Fusion Rocket Engines for Planetary Defense 1 1 2 3 3 G. A. Wurden • T. E. Weber • P. J. Turchi • P. B. Parks • T. E. Evans • 4 5 6 S. A. Cohen • J. T. Cassibry • E. M. Campbell Published online: 16 November 2015 Ó The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract We argue that it is essential for the fusion comes to discussing future energy production. Is there energy program to identify an imagination-capturing crit- another, more urgent, unique, and even more important ical mission by developing a unique product which could application for fusion? command the marketplace. We lay out the logic that this product is a fusion rocket engine, to enable a rapid response capable of deflecting an incoming comet, to prevent its impact on the planet Earth, in defense of our population, infrastructure, and civilization. As a side ben- Fusion’s Unique Application efit, deep space solar system exploration, with greater speed and orders-of-magnitude greater payload mass would As an on-board power source and thruster for fast propul- also be possible. sion in space [4], a fusion reactor would provide unparal- leled performance (high specific impulse and high specific Keywords Fusion research Á Fusion rocket engine Á power) for a spacecraft. To begin this discussion, we need Comet deflection Á Planetary defense Á Nuclear explosive some rocket terminology. Specific impulse is defined as Isp ¼ ve=g, where g is the usual Earth’s gravitational The US Department of Energy’s magnetic fusion research acceleration constant and ve is the rocket propellant’s program, based in its Office of Science, focuses on plasma exhaust velocity. The rocket equation, Mf/Mo = exp and fusion science [1] to support the long term goal of (-DV/ve), allows us to relate the final mass Mf of the environmentally friendly, socially acceptable, and eco- rocket divided by its initial mass Mo, to the change in nomically viable electricity production from fusion reac- velocity DV that it is capable of achieving. The rocket tors [2]. For several decades the US magnetic fusion requires a power source with an output power P = aMs, program has had to deal with a lack of urgency towards and where we define a to be the specific power (W/kg), and Ms inconsistent funding for this ambitious goal. In many as the mass of the power supply (including the power American circles, fusion isn’t even at the table [3] when it conditioning, structures, and any waste heat radiators). Today’s best chemical rockets produce propellant exhaust velocities (v ) up to 4.5 km/s. Fission (nuclear & e G. A. Wurden thermal) rocket engines [5] could roughly double that, to [email protected] about 8.5 km/s (\ eV/amu temperature equivalent), 1 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA constrained by material limits [6]. Electrically driven 2 Santa Fe, NM, USA thrusters [7] are already quite efficient and have higher propellant exhaust velocities (corresponding to *5 eV/ 3 General Atomics, San Diego, CA, USA amu) but are usually limited in power resulting in low 4 Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA thrust, and are driven by limited electrical power/energy 5 University of Alabama, Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, USA sources (photovoltaic or radioisotope). Development of 6 Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, NM, USA high power, high thrust plasma thrusters has not been a 123 124 J Fusion Energ (2016) 35:123–133 priority, due primarily to a lack of mission need and the Why Does Our Civilization Need Faster availability of adequate power sources in space. Spacecraft? Planetary Defense! In contrast, a working nuclear fusion core producing thrust through direct exhaust of hot plasma, could readily Most prior works [8–18] considering the need for fusion generate up to *1000 km/s exhaust velocities, corre- rocket engines have focused on manned exploration of the sponding to *10 keV/amu [8], several hundred times solar system, the large distances involved, and in particular, higher exhaust velocities than today’s high power chemical for the need to get people to Mars [19] or Jupiter [20] and nuclear thermal rocket engines. Lesser exhaust veloc- quickly enough so that health risks for crews are minimized ities could in principle be obtained as needed, through the during long duration missions. However as numerous co-expansion of additional cold propellant, to increase the events have shown, from the Cretaceous-tertiary extinction propellant mass and optimize the exhaust velocity for to the recent meteorite explosion over Chelyabinsk, the individual mission requirements [9]. Importantly, the solar system can be a dangerous place. Given this history power available could be of order 100’s of megawatts, and and the potential for large impacts there is the clear need to possibly higher. In all cases, one has to consider tradeoffs be able to quickly protect the Earth from an incoming between specific impulse, thrust, power, cost and mission comet or asteroid by altering the intruder’s orbit. Ways of requirements for any comparison between different thruster doing this depend in part on how far out in time the object approaches [10]. is identified, and are surveyed in 2004 NASA [21] and The metric for a fusion-powered rocket, as opposed to 2010 NRC (NAS) reports [22]. For decades of warning, fusion-generated electricity, is based on performance per (which may be the case for most discovered asteroids with unit mass, rather than cents/kilowatt-hour. There are many three to seven year orbits), one can develop different pre-conceptual point designs for fusion rocket cores, deflection techniques than for cases with only months of ranging from generic fusion rocket systems studies [11, warning. Fusion engines deployed on the surface of an 12], to levitated dipoles [13], to mirror machines [14], to asteroid have already been suggested for multi-month field reversed configurations [15], and magnetized target deflection of asteroids [23]. Unfortunately, for long-period fusion [8, 16]. Even ST tokamaks [17] and laser fusion or hyperbolic orbit objects, the\1-year warning scenario is sources [18] have been suggested (although present incar- more likely the case. Comets typically become nations aren’t reactors, and even so, are much too massive). detectable to telescopes at Mars to Jupiter distances as they At the highest level, the unresolved research problem is approach the Sun [3–7 astronomical units (AU)]. Further, that we need a working, compact, high thrust-to-mass ratio newly discovered comets with this type of orbit would also fusion core. It is clear that the present magnetic fusion have extremely high closing velocities (in the 40–80 km/s approach, involving large tokamaks, i.e., ITER-like, are not range, significantly faster than asteroids), with the closing matched to the needs for spacecraft propulsion. Alternative speed depending on what component of the Earth’s orbital fusion reactor designs, more compact and far less massive, vector of 30 km/s adds or subtracts in a potential impact will be required. The 2003 Report to FESAC on ‘‘Non- [24]. Plausible scenarios can be envisioned where we have electric Applications of Fusion’’ [4] clearly recognized this only 6–18 months of warning time. Compared to asteroids application and that a fusion core for spacecraft propulsion in relatively short-period orbits, which in principle can be might look different than today’s mainline fusion approa- seen years in advance, comets are the infrequent but highly ches. Some requirements would be more stringent and destructive threat requiring rapid response. some more relaxed. For example, with a rocket, the thrust- An example of a comet threat occurred in 2014, in to-mass ratio is a critical parameter; hence having a high-b addition to the better-known far-smaller Chelyabinsk plasma (b is the ratio of the plasma kinetic energy density meteor (20 km/s, 1.2 9 104 metric Tons, 500 kilotons to magnetic energy density) is extremely important to impact energy) in 2013 mentioned above. The first comet reduce the mass of the magnets and their power supplies. discovered in 2013, just after New Years on January 3, was Tritium could be carried on short missions, so a breeding detected from the Sidings Springs Observatory in the blanket is not even needed. First wall requirements could Southern Hemisphere [25]. It was named C/2013 A1 (at be relaxed (good vacuum in space, and plasma-wall 56 km/s, 0.7 km in diameter, weighing 3 9 108 metric interactions less important for short duration missions). Tons, it had 4 billion megatons of kinetic energy). For Furthermore, low neutron emissions are desirable to reduce nearly 3 months after first being spotted, the best deter- the shielding and waste heat radiator mass, thereby mination of the orbital elements did not rule out an impact improving specific power of the system, meaning that on Mars, on October 19, 2014. In fact it missed Mars by advanced fuels (such as D-He3) would be preferred over only 1/3 the Earth–Moon distance, at 140,000 km (see DT. Fig. 1 below). Had it impacted, the blast would be visible 123 J Fusion Energ (2016) 35:123–133 125 Fig. 1 Space artist Kim Poor’s impression of a comet flyby of Mars. Comet C/2013-A1 passed extremely close to Mars on October 19, 2014 in the daylight from Earth and we probably would have lost all of our spacecraft on the ground and in orbit around Mars.
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