Fusion Rockets

The first space mission was conducted by the Soviets on October 4, 1957. Four years later Russian Lt. Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. Shortly after many nations started to develop their technology to compete in Space-Race. Then came space shuttles, nations came together to build one laboratory in space about 400 km. from the surface which would orbit the Earth where astronauts would live known as the International Space Station(ISS). 

It took more than 40 space shuttle flights to build the ISS, in total the space shuttle was used for 135 space missions. It required about 500k gallons of fuel for only one launch of a space shuttle other than these missions; other rocket missions for spacewalks and satellite launches also require huge amounts of fuel, so as we can see conventional chemical rockets are not quite efficient for frequent space missions and it pollutes the environment too. So it's necessary to find an alternative to chemical rockets which can be quick, efficient and can be available easily.

There are many concepts and theories on alternatives for chemical thrusters. We can solve the above issues by finding an alternative of chemicals, which can produce enormous energy on combustion of just a little amount of it. We can also use concepts like ion thrusters, Thermal rockets or by using inert propellants. Fusion rockets are a concept which can be used for this purpose and are very efficient, powerful and have their own disadvantages.

Basically fusion means joining of two or more things to form a single entity, here things which combine are atoms which in results to release enormous energy as it is an exothermic process and our goal is to concentrate that energy to provide thrust to the rocket. It is a hypothetical process which uses nuclear fusion to provide continuous acceleration without carrying a huge amount of fuel supply. The first ever concept was project Orion.

The  construction of these rockets is much larger and is more complex than any other spacecraft. The rocket would consist of a large tungsten coated steel pusher plate and huge shock absorb the sudden thrust into continuous acceleration. The scale of such rockets can be reduced in future when we develop sophisticated devices which do not tear easily and can control the reaction. With current technology we can use hydrogen bombs(Project Orion) but that would be very problematic as its biggest disadvantage would be the radiation, so lift off wouldn't be possible but space rockets  become highly efficient. Another disadvantage with current stage development will be the large size and mass of the reactor as it uses nuclear power.

 

By development of this propulsion system we can save time on journeys like Mars. It takes about 9 months by probes to reach Mars in a specific alignment of Mars and Earth, by using fusion rockets we can narrow it down to a few weeks or even days. As weight of fuel is no longer a problem and hoping that in future we would develop such reactors that will be smaller in size and would withstand many trips we can carry heavy payload to colonize other planets and also establish inter-planetary transportation, caring people and goods to other planets. Establishing a base on the moon will be easily possible.

Developing this technology quickly would take efforts of more than one nation as it wouldn’t be cheap, as components must be replaced frequently.