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Power

World's First Nuclear Fusion-Powered Electric Propulsion Drive Unveiled (interestingengineering.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the doodle-to-reality dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from InterestingEngineering: A concept that began as a doodle at a conference years ago is now becoming a reality. RocketStar Inc. has showcased (PDF) its advanced nuclear-based propulsion technology called the FireStar Drive. It is said to be the world's first electric device for spacecraft propulsion boosted by nuclear fusion. Recently, the company announced the successful initial demonstration of this electric propulsion technology.

The FireStar Drive harnesses the power of nuclear fusion to improve the performance of RocketStar's "water-fueled pulsed plasma thruster." A spacecraft's thrusters perform various functions, including propulsion, orbital changes, and even docking with other orbiting platforms. Moreover, the device employs a unique sort of aneutronic nuclear fusion, which is a fusion reaction that generates few to no neutrons as a byproduct. "The base thruster generates high-speed protons through the ionization of water vapor," noted the press release. Therefore, these protons collide with the nucleus of a boron atom, which starts the fusion reaction. The FireStar Drive begins a fusion process by adding boron into the thruster exhaust, resulting in high-energy particles that increase thrust.

RocketStar's current thruster is dubbed M1.5. Plans to test the FireStar Drive are now ongoing. The in-space technological demonstration will take place aboard D-Orbit's patented OTV ION Satellite Carrier. The SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission will likely launch the demo test in July and October 2024. Furthermore, the team plans to undertake ground tests this year, with more in-space demonstrations scheduled for February 2025. The FireStar Drive will undergo testing as a payload aboard Rogue Space System's Barry-2 spacecraft in the same month. The thruster M1.5 is already ready for delivery to clients.
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World's First Nuclear Fusion-Powered Electric Propulsion Drive Unveiled More

World's First Nuclear Fusion-Powered Electric Propulsion Drive Unveiled

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  • And Now (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @10:38PM (#64338033)

    We'll switch over to the Internet and have a committee of annoying skeptics tell us why it will never work.

    Bob?

    • Re:And Now (Score:5, Funny)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @11:13PM (#64338057)

      Thank you, The Cat.

      Bob here with the depressing news that no fusion reactor has ever produced more energy than was put into it. Sadly the hooplah about NIF putting out 3MJ of energy for 2MJ of laser input neglected to mention that the lasers drew 400MJ, so the thing was as usual for the last 70+ years a total failure as far as any meaningful step to fusion power production.

      Most experimental reactors go for the easiest type of fusion, D-T. However RocketStar claims they'll boil water to make protons to fuse with boron, a type of fusion that takes over 3 billion degrees C to achieve, or in absolute units a temperature that is 30 times as high as D-T, and a nuclear cross-section three orders of magnitude smaller than D-T.

      in short, Cat, they are so full of male bovine fecal matter it's a wonder the whites of their eyes aren't brown!

      And now back to you, Cat.

      • Re:And Now (Score:5, Informative)

        by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @11:36PM (#64338087)

        The article didn't seem to have much more info than TFS so I'm guessing here, but in general, you may not need to generate net power for fusion to be useful for rocket thrust.

        There's plenty of solar power available in space (at least near the inner planets), and as the Farnsworth fusor showed decades ago, it's not hard to generate fusion reactions if you don't expect positive energy output. For some space missions, propellant mass is very important, and getting the highest velocity exhaust is the goal. Using solar energy to induce fusion reactions could be one way to do this. Of course, like most ion drives, this would be very low thrust over long time spans.

        • There is no way with mankind's current level of tech to get any meaningful amount of thrust from a proton boron reaction, the temperature needed is too high and the reaction cross section absurdly low. A tabletop fusors level of fusion product production is what we're talking about here, useless for propulsion but maybe good enough to give a human mild radiation poisoning.This is a scam.

          • You do know the test in july/october are practical tests in space, so it has already been tested in laboratories here on earth. So the chances of it being a scam is very low.

            • chances of it being a scam for investor money are immense. putting a scam on a rocket into space doesn't elevate its worth or trustworthiness.

      • Re:And Now (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Saturday March 23, 2024 @12:01AM (#64338113)

        I read the summary and TFA slightly differently. They are using the base thruster for the majority of the thrust and adding Boron as an enhancer (accelerant?) to boost the thrust.

        For the testing, the team added boronated water into the exhaust plume of a pulsed plasma thruster during a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project for AFWERX. “This created alpha particles and gamma rays, clear indications of nuclear fusion,” noted the release.

        The discovery was further confirmed and validated during the SBIR Phase 2 project at Georgia Tech’s High Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory (HPEPL) in Atlanta, Georgia. Moreover, the technique produced ionizing radiation and increased the base propulsion unit’s thrust by 50%.

        So the propulsion is not completely from a fusion reaction, rather it is being boosted much like aluminum powder is used to enhance explosives.

        • They are using the base thruster for the majority of the thrust and adding Boron as an enhancer (accelerant?) to boost the thrust.

          It reminded me of an afterburner. Maybe it could be called an "afterfuser"?

        • Absurd rubbish, to get any meaningful level of thrust enhancement would require a true working fusion reactor facing all the obstacles I mentioned. Doing the equivalent of a particle accelerator's inducing of fusion gives a smaller than microscopic return on an amount of energy suitable to power a large city. For example, the Tevatron at Fernilab used more electricity than Rockford Illinois but the fusion reactions in targets would not be perceptible to humans even while giving a high rad dose.

          This is a sc

      • Let me guess, they are looking for investment money and/or subsidies?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        This isn't about using fusion to generate energy, it's about using fusion to produce a higher velocity thrust allowing more efficient use of propellant at a cost of more energy input required.

        Given a large solar panel or fission power, the propellant itself is the scarce resource.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by The Cat ( 19816 )

        Thanks Bob. And now a word from Clorox.

    • Sounds Plausible (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Saturday March 23, 2024 @02:10AM (#64338207) Journal
      Once you penetrate the fusion hype it sounds plausible. Essentially they already have a very low-power plasma thruster that works by accelerating protons in an electric field - essentially a mini-particle accelerator. What it seems they then do is inject some boron that the protons hit and cause a nuclear reaction that is technically fusion.

      So this is not a SciFi fusion rocket with an insane amount of thrust but an incremental improvement on an ion-thruster that produces a tiny amount of thrust and so can only be used for orbital corrections which is much less exciting than they are trying to make it sound.

  • It's early (Score:3)

    by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @10:45PM (#64338041)
    April 1st is still over a week away.

  • Or, seeing how Nvidia is boasting elsewhere of selling chips that "go beyond the laws of physics", maybea we have another hype train just deparating?

  • Meanwhile hopefully some company is researching how to use existing matter for fuel that is obtainable during the trip across space.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Were this drive to be workable, that wouldn't be a major problem, I note the summary didn't say how much thrust would be produced, though. So even if it's workable, it may still not be useful.

      We'll see. If, as indicated, they're about ready to start shipping product (before final testing? But perhaps I didn't read that correctly.) then we should find out within a couple of years.

  • Of all the vaporware that ever vaporwared, this is the vaporwariest.

  • I don't know about you guys, but I'm staying on the sidelines until they get to at least M6.

  • This wasn't even on my bingo card of audacious claims. Here's hoping it's everything they claim and more.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Boron catalyzed fusion is one of the things various people have been talking about (for stationary fusion reactors), but if this works it will be the first time such a thing has been successful. Perhaps there's something about rockets that makes it more likely to work, but I don't think that's the way to bet.

  • If you can't make a static power plant, what are odds that you can make electric propulsion drive? Only fools will believe. Wasn't expecting this from slashdot. What is next, a water powered car?

    • I'm not saying this is real in any way, shape, or form... However, it's much easier to produce a propulsion drive than a reactor, for the same reason that it is much easier to make a nuclear bomb than a nuclear reactor. An uncontrolled reaction is easy.

      In this instance, the fusion isn't used to generate electricity- it's augmenting the output of an ion drive- allegedly.

      • Particle accelerators don't generate any meaningful amount of fusion power, microscopic is even too big a word. This company's claims are absurd.

        • Seems likely to be the case. But hydrogen-boron fusion is a thing.
          The cross-section seems far too small to be achievable here, but if it is happening, it would throw out highly energetic alpha particles.
          It would in fact augment the output of the ion drive considerably. I just don't see how they can get the confinement required.

    • Accelerator not Reactor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Saturday March 23, 2024 @02:21AM (#64338237) Journal
      What they are doing is not a fusion reactor it's simply a small proton particle accelerator with boron injected into the beam. While they do not seem to state the thrust this thing generates it's essentially an incremental improvement on an ion-thruster so I expect it will be tiny. Particle accelerators have been able to produce fusion reactions for years - indeed even the first-ever accelerators produced by Cockcroft and Walton in the 1920s could do that using nothing more than a van der Graff.

      Accelerators are useless for power generation because only a tiny number of nuclei are involved and it takes way more energy to make it happen than it produces. This also means that the thrust will be tiny because only a handful of nuclei will react. So technically (if it does work) it is a fusion-based thruster but it is way less exciting that they are trying to make it sound.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Pretty good. Have you ever thrown some gasoline on a fire? How difficult is that? Do you think that's more ore less difficult than making an efficient power plant?

      This is pretty much the same thing. An ion drive generates fast ions. In this case it's a stream of protons. If you chuck something fusible in that exhaust, it's going to fuse. Since the product is heavier, you'd have more thrust, but probably less specific impulse. Kids have built equivalent systems in their backyards.

      Also, they've demonstrated i

  • This might work, but... (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Saturday March 23, 2024 @01:39AM (#64338179) Journal

    This might work, but there's one problem. In order to start it up, you have to successfully plug in to all those USB sockets on the first try.

  • My Flying Car is almost ready (Score:4, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday March 23, 2024 @01:50AM (#64338187)

    I've finished the design, did all the FEA analysis and worked out all the aerodynamics. I've even painted the exterior and assembled most of the interior and chassis. The only thing left to do is figure out how to build an anti-gravity generator.

  • If this is working - why similar mechanism cannot be used on Earth in power plants

  • So these guys claim to not only have managed to create aneutronic nuclear fusion (practically a side note) they've managed to build it into a sexy little thruster unit?

    Tell ITER they should just pack it in, job is done.

    Someone should update wiki, which asserts "...the conditions required to harness aneutronic fusion are much more extreme than those required for deuterium-tritium fusion such as at ITER. "

    • LOL. I was thinking the same thing. I think they invented cold fusion, warp drive, and perpetual motion too. So let's see this so-called "demo".

  • As for using boron and expecting nuclear things to happen, there is something similar that is already a thing. It's called boron-neutron capture therapy. It involves a chemotherapy medication that is not yet active. It incorporates boron in its structure, but is not actually active until the boron captures a neutron and transmutes into carbon. The idea is to inject the medication then aim a neutron beam at the tumor. The substance is transmuted at the beam and becomes active - but only there.

    https://ww [nih.gov]

  • How boring must the conference have been if someone had the time to come up with a nuclear motor?
  • D-D needs 10X lower temperatures and about 100X lower Lawsen P X T than p-B, so if they are getting significant energy from p-B, they would have a working reactor running D-D.

    They could raise nearly unlimited funding with that demonstration. There are fusion companies funded above $1B that have not gotten close to D-D or even D-T (10X easier) breakeven numbers yet.

    Its difficult to imagine any way the system they describe can reach the temperatures, pressures and confinement times required for p-B fu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      The whole thruster is essentially a charged particle accelerator. That works for boron proton fusion since the outputs are also charged particles. With DD fusion much of the energy is in neutrons. That energy would be mostly lost.

      • Accelerator based fusion has extremely low efficiency, the nuclei scatter far more often than they fuse. Even with an optimal design, like a Farnsworth fusor, you can' get beyond a tiny fraction of break even - which is to say the fusion energy is a tiny fraction of the energy to accelerate the particles in the first place.

        D-D produces about 1/2 the energy in neutrons, but the total enegy production rate would be something like 100X the p-B production rate under the same conditions -if you were hot enou

  • To get that 50% thrust boost, the Boron fraction in the water propellant must be fairly high, meaning the propellant mass increased, which courtesy of the Rocket Equation means the *net* thrust improvement won't be 50%.

    Next, we must examine the efficiency from the Boron perspective, which, without knowing plasma temperatures and density (other than being high enough to support p-B fusion), still must mean the Boron efficiency would be fairly low, perhaps miniscule, primarily due to no fusion occurring on th

  • The claim is that by introducing boronated water into the exhaust they get pB fusion which then added so much additional energy they got 50% more thrust.

    Not in a million billion years.

    All fusion fuels have a curve that describes their reaction rate at any given temperature. If the fuel is too cool, it will not have enough energy for the ions to overcome their mutual repulsion. If it is too high, the ions will move past each other faster than the reaction takes place. The result is a poisson-like graph of te

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