Category: Energy
-
Final Titan Aircraft Paper Published in Acta Astronautica
The final version of our paper, “Nuclear Fusion Powered Titan Aircraft,” by Mr. Michael Paluszek, Ms. Annie Price, Ms. Zoe Koniaris, Dr. Christopher Galea, Ms. Stephanie Thomas, Dr. Samuel Cohen, and Ms. Rachel Stutz is now available, open access, on the Acta Astronautica website. As described in our earlier post, the paper discusses a mission…
-
PSS appears on the Space Business Podcast to talk about nuclear fusion propulsion
Mike Paluszek and I appear on the newest episode of Space Business Podcast to talk about nuclear fusion propulsion, Direct Fusion Drive, and the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) concept! We had a great conversation with the host of this podcast, Rafael Roettgen, who asked us thoughtful questions. In this episode, we discuss topics such as:…
-
Our Titan Mission Paper preprint is now online in Acta Astronautica
Our IAC paper on a fusion-powered Titan mission is now available in preprint on Acta Astronautica online, with the final version to come soon! Our mission concept utilizes two PFRC reactors: one configured as a Direct Fusion Drive rocket for the journey to Titan, and a second configured as a power source for the electric…
-
Crowdfunding for fusion development closing at the end of April
Our crowdfunding opportunity at is scheduled to close at the end of the month. We’ve raised over $100K so far to support fusion development and specifically, the PFRC-2 experiment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory as we close in on our ion heating milestone. This is the last two weeks to invest in our raise on…
-
ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit 2023
At the end of March, we attended the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in National Harbor, MD. At the Summit we presented our work on power electronics tailored for fusion systems under an ARPA-E GAMOW grant. It was a great experience to network with many other awardees of ARPA-E grants working on innovative energy projects and…
-
Young Women’s Conference @PPPL
Stephanie and I attended the YWC conducted by PPPL at Princeton University on March 16, 2023. This conference introduces middle-school and high-school-aged girls (in 7th to 10th grades) to women scientists and engineers and the wide breadth of careers available to them in these fields. Prominent women scientists and engineers from around the region spend…
-
Submarine Supplier Days 2023
I attended Submarine Supplier Days 2023 in Washington, D.C. March 7 and 8. It is an opportunity for companies contributing to building the latest attack and ballistic missile submarines to get together. The two big programs are for the Columbia Class fleet ballistic missile submarine and the Virginia Class attack submarines. Australia will be buying…
-
New paper published on analyzing and mitigating pulse-pile-up artifacts in PFRC-2 plasma x-ray spectra
A new paper, “Analysis and Mitigation of Pulse-Pile-Up Artifacts in Plasma Pulse-Height X-ray Spectra” by Taosif Ahsan and our team has been published open-access in MDPI Plasma. It describes the implementation of an algorithm, the two-photon trapezoidal uncorrelated-pulse model, to improve analysis of x-ray spectra emitted from PFRC-2 plasma. This model was developed to reduce…
-
Winter Power Electronics Internship
At MIT, we are given the month of January off from classes to pursue our own interests, whether they be career-oriented or hobby-based. During these five weeks, I have worked at PSS as a power electronics intern. My time at PSS has given me the opportunity to explore so many of the industry based applications…
-
PFRC Article in the Journal of Fusion Energy
Our latest paper, The Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration for Compact Nuclear Fusion Power Plants, is available in the Journal of Fusion Energy, Volume 42, Issue 1, June 2023. This paper is the first released in “The emergence of Private Fusion Enterprises” collection. A view-only version is available for free here. Our paper gives an overview of…