U.S. scientists plan to master nuclear fusion and a rocket for interplanetary flights - respectively, with an engine that uses this principle to work. Tame the fusion reaction humanity is trying to have fifty years, but to master this technology has not yet succeeded in any of the branches of human industry. The more interesting application of Americans for a breakthrough in this area.
Today#39;s rockets use chemical rocket engines. Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) and the University of Redmond (University of Redmond) intend to build a missile with a fusion engine, that is, the energy will emerge as a result of the nuclear fusion reaction, not splitting, as in humans have mastered the nuclear reaction.
Fusion reaction to start is simple enough. This will require a strong magnetic field and a strong heating, for example by laser. In a pinch you can use a regular nuclear bomb, which the world has nowhere to go. However, control and maintain the chain reaction is extremely difficult.
However, the foundations of the theory of controlled thermonuclear reactions in the last century developed the Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Tamm. They outlined a method of plasma confinement by magnetic fields. Its essence consists in the following: a missed by inductor windings electric current creates a poloidal field (such that is directed along the lines passing through the poles of the spherical coordinate system), which warms and maintains the plasma. However, it should not contact the walls of the chamber, as in those days, and still no materials that could withstand this temperature.
Magnetic confinement and heating of the plasma was carried out in a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils (tokamak). There, in 1956 the Institute of Atomic Energy of the Kurchatov plasma heated up to 10 million degrees, which is enough to start the fusion reaction. And their American colleagues have developed a method of inertial confinement. With him in the so-called pulsed systems fusion starts heating deuterium and tritium, the super-powered lasers or beams of high-energy particles.
At the same time, one of the major technological challenges of fusion reactions is still a fact that the existing methods do not provide the energy gain, ie, the excess amount of energy received over the volume consumed to run and maintain the process. Unlike fission, which is used in the nuclear reaction, the synthesis involves a number of atomic nuclei collision under external pressure. It must be such as to overcome the Coulomb repulsion between like-charged nuclei. This leads to a new core and release large amounts of energy. But as an American will solve the problem of cost huge amounts of energy to maintain the reaction?
However, it should be noted that the theoretical basis of this method are already available. In the past, Americans have submitted miscalculated computer conceptual model that provides a power gain by combining the two approaches. The venue of the reaction must be heated by the laser cylinder where the resulting plasma is placed in a magnetic field. This field allows formed by the reaction of the particles do not leave the synthesis and stay in place that retains a high temperature deuterium-tritium plasma. Moreover, with this approach, the opportunity to constantly renew the fusion reaction, which significantly reduces the external energy to keep it going. It is possible that these solutions and will be used in fusion engine.
In funded by NASA project to build a space vehicle with the fusion engine response will be called a special magnetic field configuration, which will be affected by a pellet of deuterium and tritium, and lithium rings that will shrink around the pellets. Due to this pressure will be launched thermonuclear reaction, which is the result of an explosion, which energy is channeled and pushes the rocket. Explosions will occur every 10 seconds, the missile will have a jerk, being dispersed to thousands of kilometers per hour, and fuel consumption is to be minimized.
It is assumed that such a missile will fly to Mars in just 30 days, making the mission to the Red Planet is more real. Collect such carrier makes sense in orbit, from which you can start to Mars. All this would cost billions of dollars, but the success of the event will open prospects for the gradual development of the nearest planets of the solar system.
