07-13-2015, 08:22 PM
(07-13-2015, 05:35 AM)radtech497 Wrote: Seems more like a take on Project Daedalus, which used internal ICF (inertial confinement fusion) than Project Orion, which used external thermonuclear detonations. Alternatively, it might be a take on Project Longshot.
I don't think that 'internal fusion' is quite the correct description here. It gets used in the EG too, and might want updating.
To my mind, this remains 'external', because you've got empty space on one side, and a curved pusher plate on the other (albeit one made from magnetic fields). ICF and other pulse propulsion systems (ICAN, AIM, MIF) might all be reasonably considered external, because the energetic reaction happens in the nozzle itself. There's no flow of hot reaction products through the nozzle, only out of it.
Contrast with magnetically confined fusion, gasdynamic mirror or mirror cell fusion rocket designs where all the business of heating the reaction mass is done inside a reaction chamber and channeled out of a magnetic nozzle, which has a constriction (the throat). All hot reaction mass passes through the throat; no further reaction happens in the nozzle.
(07-13-2015, 06:33 AM)stevebowers Wrote: This concept seems to have the option for using either fusion or fission. I suppose that it would also be possible to use it for straight thermal propulsion, with no nuclear reaction at all.
Not quite so good for thermal work, though you could push out pellets of inert reaction mass and convert them to a hot plasmoid using an energetic laser pulse. Most thermal engines use an enclosed reaction chamber to get maximum heating of the reaction mass.