Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 1 November 2010, is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2010 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It covers fusion plasma physics, confinement methods, and propulsion concepts that use aneutronic fuels such as hydrogen and boron-11. It concludes that such thrusters may soon replace satellite ion thrusters. It also finds that they will not be practical beyond the solar system without breakthrough propulsion physics.
“NASA”5 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'F811. 8FFll!l*L 1!1!11! t!IHL"i' Chapter 6: Future Developments NEAR-TERM DEVELOPMENTS Near-term developments of fusion propulsion will include the timeframe from 2010 to 2020. It will leverage the privately funded developments in DPF, FRC, and IEC for commercial fusion reactors, as well as the DOE developments of magneto-inertial fusion, including magnetized target fusion and high-density plasma physics experiments. During this timeframe, it is expected that one or more of these fusion concepts will develop sufficient experimental data or even achieve sustained ignition breakthroughs that will allow the technology push to proceed into aerospace propulsion applications. The IEC thruster described in Chapter 4 is a near-term candidate to replace HCTs with high lsp and thrust augmented by aneutronic fusion. At the same time, associated technology development from the mainline DOE programs and ITER tokamak programs will contribute to the import areas of the following: • Super conducting magnets. • Energy storage supercapacitors. • Fuel storage systems. • Fuel ion injection accelerators. • Compact high-voltage converters. • Direct ion energy converters. • Plasma propulsion systems. Experiments and system analyses to validate the applicability of aneutronic fusion propulsion should be conducted early on, since they may bias the path taken for the various reactor and propulsion combinations. UNCLASSIFIED//Flilll. lilffll!l,t.t l!l!i! 8HLV 25
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.