Helicity Space, a commercial space company developing in-space propulsion and power technology based on fusion power, announced an investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture capital arm of Lockheed Martin. This latest raise from Lockheed Martin Ventures comes on the heels of a $5 million seed round of Helicity Space funding from investors including Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures and Gaingels in December.
Helicity Space wants to get an afterburner on an electric propulsion system. It will be pulsed-power magneto inertial fusion concept. It is similar to z-pinch but more like helical pinch. The Lockheed funding could be enough to make the 24-36 target for the actual nuclear power propulsion prototype. They will take 24-36 months (from 1 year ago) to get their lab system built and already have various components built and operating. The could now be 12-24 months from a working lab system at Caltech.
They generate the plasma, then pre-heat the ions and then compress to fusion and then mix it for propulsion exhaust.
The system mainly scales with the number of plasma guns. They will initially target 100 kilowatt hours of power to produce 50 kilowatts for generating high quality thrust and then scale 100 kilowatts powering 2 megawatt hours to produce thrust. They will then need to transition to more difficult to get to far more powerful systems. Various materials suggest they can get tens of newtons of thrust and then scale it to tens of thousands of newtons. The ISP would be 7000 to 160000.
The “large” system would get to 55-1000 newtons of thruyst with 30 plasma guns and convert about 100 kilowatts into 1-2 megawatts of power. The very large systems with 170 plasma guns could reach gigawatts of power and tens of thousands of newtons of thrust. Below are several charts describing specs for the planned scaling of the systems.
The screenshots of slides below go over scientific details and technical details of what they plan to do and how they plan to do it.
They plan to large systems with built about 30 plasma guns and able to reach the solar gravitational lens point (about 16 times further than Pluto) in less than 2 years.
It will start with D-D fusion and then scale to D-He3 fusion.
$500 million would be enough to generate an initial fusion system that can produce thrust and flown in space.
There will be larger and larger net energy gain as the systems evolve. It could lead this to great fusion drives as well as fusion energy on earth.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Wont the temps in this system be a serious problem in space? In this design, the exhaust, all the heat, from these powers, i mean where is the cooling? They sokved that pretty with chemical rockets but here?
Wow this is Mars in 13 days (not counting buildup speed) With a small unit? People talking zero gravity, with this thrust gravity will be no problem I guess. Mars = 1.5 au btw, correct me if Im wrong.
Thrust seems very high :/
A centrifuge is a practical solution to producing gravity (As long as you take into account the coriolous (pardon spelling) effect. The “spinning object” your in has to be big enough to not spin the liquid in your inner ear. Unless you like being “sea sick” If you’ve ever been sea sick, the only thing you want is a gun, to put you out of your misery. frankly it’s THAT awful.) Our current engineering is not yet up to building spinning spacecraft unless you WANT to die before you leave orbit…
Right now, the best hope is to go faster. That limits body breakdown due to lack of gravity, as well as less exposure to solar/cosmic radiation. Neither does any body any good. And that we could “do faster” then artificial gravity or spinning spacecraft big enough so we don’t throw up.
this proposal is largely nonsense
it would be shocking if they even got to net power by 2040
anyways all the low-beta concepts in their comparison graph won’t even work economically for power plants on the surface, let alone in space where mass comes at a huge premium
Reaction plasma engines =great challenges. Helicity is related to chirality.
A Google of: Spacetime and chiral-ity will produce thousands of hits and yet the connection is largely-unknown. Also spacetime is linked to a kagome structure which
is a series of equilateral triangles- and six from a hexagon..that donimates material science. Chiralex US8901943 studies benzene electron ring currents and their
ability to modify gravity. Ad astra, Ron Kita http://www.chiralex.com
The most important thing about space travel is you need to get any where, as quickly as possible to where you want to go. Why? Because solar radiation and (this is more important, lack of gravity will kill you, the later will kill you quicker.) We have just recently learned that lack of gravity injures the immune system. It just not cause bone loss it causes the immune system to shut down. No S***. Lack of gravity causes every system in our body to shut down. Period.
There are two way’s to deal with this; First go must faster to get where you want to go, or generate artificial gravity. Guess what gang? The former is much more likely then the later. We currently (last time I checked we don’t know what gravity IS, let alone how to control it.) are now where near doing that. Oh, I wish “warp drive” was possible. It would make my old ass so very happy…
Sleep in a centrifuge. Solved it for you.
The biggest hurdle for artificial gravity is our chronic lack on launch mass capability.
It has been so darn expensive historically to launch something, we just don’t allow themselves to think about launching and building huge rotating sections on our ships.
Gee, even a couple of Starships alone could be made to rotate in a bolo configuration, to give the passengers some weight and avoid most of the problems of 0g.
And I can confidently assume that config will be indeed used, for trips to Mars or to farther destinations.
“…it (lack of gravity) causes the immune system to shut down.”
I doubt that. Were that true then at least one International Space Station astronaut on a long-duration mission would have died from progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) by now.
Artificial gravity? See 2001, the movie, from 1968. We had the answer then.
Too bad this won’t work on Earth to solve all our energy needs. /s
Clearly this is a scam and the LM VC’s aren’t as bright as the rest of LM employees.
Hey, if it works to get somewhere in space, really quick, really fast, that’s what matters dude!
Prove it’s a scam
fusion requirements are different from Earth pal.
You don´t even need break-even in space. You can theoretically have a fission reactor. 80% of its power going to the fusion system, 20% to the power the spacecraft.
Even if the fusion runs at a small loss, if it provides enough trust and ISP, you are good to go, as long as it’s better than what you can achieve with a fission propulsion scheme (which is usually around only 900 ISP)
So while difficult, the challenges are different.
Right, for fusion rockets, you don’t need to achieve breakeven for the added energy to be useful. Though the closer you get to breakeven, the more power you can put through the engine, because your source of supplementary power isn’t as burdened.
“it’s better than what you can achieve with a fission propulsion scheme (which is usually around only 900 ISP)”
That’s for nuclear thermal, like Nerva. You can easily get into the tens of thousands ISP if you don’t mind the fission fuel ending up in the exhaust. Zubrin’s nuclear salt water rocket would be good for 6-7,000 seconds. Mini-Mag Orion, where you use magnetic compression to drastically reduce the minimum critical mass for an Orion drive, would be even higher.
Z pinch fusion/fission, where the z pinch fusion supplies fast neutrons to an envelope of U238 or T232, additionally has the advantage that the fission occurs in isotopes that can’t sustain a chain reaction, so you can store the fuel compactly. That’s a pretty big deal, because the need to avoid premature criticality really complicates most fission approaches, limiting the mass ratio you can achieve.
The limitation to 3 figure ISPs is due to the need to contain the fissile material, so it doesn’t end up in the exhaust. That drastically limits the temperatures you can use.
But if you used nuclear power not in such a “dirty” way as Nerva, but just as a power source for say radio-plasma propulsion, would that solve that problem? I think it would, but don’t know for sure…