Magnetic fields link and unlink, releasing a massive amount of power.
Directing the power outward turns the fusion reactor into a thruster.
A Department of Energy (DoE) physicist has a new nuclear fusion rocket concept that uses magnetic fields to make thrust. It’s a far-out idea that could carry astronauts to Mars.
You like nuclear. So do we. Let s nerd out over nuclear together.
The mechanism is already at play in Earth’s nuclear fusion reactors, as well as the solar flares of the sun. Could we really use linking and unlinking magnetic fields to make the long trip to the red planet?
30 January 2021, 5:09 am EST By
After the highly-anticipated return of man to the moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as private space company SpaceX headed by Elon Musk, is planning to finally step on Martian soil for the first time and maybe even create a colony that could thrive in the Red Planet but how will they do that?
(Photo : Pexels)
Prolonged Space Travel Issues
Although space travel is rather common, what with astronauts going to and fro the International Space Station (ISS), a trip to Mars would take a long time, given our current technology.
In a previous report by Tech Times, studies have found that prolonged space flight can be dangerous for humans, so a trip to Mars could even be deadly, and that is one of the problems scientists are trying to solve before any human could step to Mars.
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Team led by PPPL physicist wins major supercomputer time to help develop fusion energy
Multi-institutional researchers led by physicist C.S. Chang of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have been granted millions of supercomputer node-hours to investigate issues crucial to the success of ITER, the international tokamak under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power. The two-year award from the DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE), selected in competition with science and engineering research from around the world, enables the team to extend its previous INCITE work into areas of critical interest for next-step fusion facilities.
I’m not a rocket scientist and I didn’t go to Princeton, but I’m interested in going to Mars if the trip was a lot shorter. That’s why the news of a Princeton physicist developing an engine based on the same principle as solar flares (which travel at the speed of light) that would shorten a. Read more »
What’s next might be building a solid prototype. The fusion rocket concept ITER
A physicist has come up with a new rocket engine thruster concept that could take people to Mars ten times more quickly.
The physicist in question, Fatima Ebrahimi, is the concept s inventor and is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
An engine thruster based off solar flares
One of the main differences between Ebrahimi s new rocket thruster concept and other space-proven ones is that hers uses magnetic fields to boost particles of plasma out of the back of the rocket. So far, space-proven ones use electric fields to boost plasma.