Fusion-Powered Express to the Planets

The year 2010 is an interesting space nexus.

Science fiction fans will wistfully think of the Arthur C. Clarke novel "2010: Odyssey Two." In this literary sequel to the 1968 seminal film classic "2001:A Space Odyssey," astronauts return to Jupiter to track down the mysterious alien black monolith and salvage the abandoned Discovery 1, a nuclear fission powered exploration ship. (There is also a horribly anachronistic 1984 film adaptation starring "Jaws-killer" Roy Scheider).

But where are we really in space in 2010? This week's top space news story: a $380 million habitat module complete with highly publicized picture windows was installed on NASA's International Space Station. (The cupola reminds me of the bi-convex windows on Jules Verne's imaginary sub the Nautilus.

Space shuttle pilot Terry Virts told the Associated Press that the new room addition reminded him of the completion of America's transcontinental railroad. "When it was done, it opened up the West and let our country become the nation that we are today. This is the beginning of a future of space exploration... a long time from now, we'll look back on and see in a similar vein."

The cold reality is that before the end of 2010 the last space shuttle mission will have flown -- completing three decades of milk runs back-and-forth to low Earth orbit. This comes as NASA re-evaluates its future after President Barack Obama –- acting under the gravitational pull of the ballooning federal deficit -- abandoned the U.S. plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.

What didn't make news is a small item that just might eventually lay the real railroad tracks for human journeys to the planets.

A few months ago the U.S. Navy awarded $7.9 million in government stimulus funds to a small New Mexico R&D facility called EMC2 Fusion. The money is to go toward building a scaled-up version of a nuclear fusion reactor that would be small enough to loft into space.

This reactor would generate an enormous amount of energy under a somewhat unorthodox scheme called inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC). The dream is that a relatively small piece of equipment could release energy by fusing atoms without the need for duplicating temperatures inside the sun. Conventional fusion experiments require maintaining enormous temperatures and pressures in a confined space to convert mass to energy.

Given the long history of unsuccessful fusion research –- especially the cold fusion debacle of 1989 -- taking this idea seriously is a barrier to the development of this technology, say some supporters.

This fusion strategy, pioneered by physicist Robert Bussard, involves designing a high-voltage cage in such a way that atomic nuclei slam into each other at high speeds to combine, sparking fusion. It works like magnetic plasma confinement fusion but eliminates the need for huge magnets that makes other fusion facilities the size of warehouses.

Though a dark horse in the fusion race, such a device, if successful, would make human interplanetary travel practical. A far-out design, worthy of Clarke’s "2010" vision, has been proposed by Richard Dell, founder of the World Institute for Science and Engineering.

Called Fusion Ship II, it is a 500-ton vehicle powered by a cluster of IEC fusion reactors fueled by the isotope helium 3.

The energy from the fusion reactions would be converted directly to electricity to power a pair of huge ion thrusters. These engines would provide a total thrust of 200 million pounds, and burn long enough to accelerate the ship to a top speed of 450,000 miles per hour. One-way time to Jupiter would be approximately one year.

Even if technically doable, such a ship is decades away. But it is worth the wait if it means taking colonists to Mars in a matter of weeks and not months. They would stand a much better chance of arriving alive.

Clarke probably didn’t think that by 2010 rocketry would still be in the horse drawn buggy era. He realized that extraordinarily energetic space power plants are inevitable if we want to colonize the solar system.