PSS has been performing aerospace consulting since our founding in 1992. Our aerospace capabilities include consulting, MATLAB toolboxes, flight software and high-fidelity simulation, and CubeSat hardware development.
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 to Titan using the Direct Fusion Drive on the transfer vehicle, and a Princeton Field Reversed Configuration reactor to power an aircraft, that could fly around Titan for years. The reactor allows for high-power instruments, some of which were first proposed for the NASA Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter Mission. The paper was first presented at IAC 2022 in Paris.
Two key figures were updated from the preprint version of the paper – Figure 11 and Figure 12, showing the power flow and mass breakdown of the PFRC for the electric aircraft. The earlier figures were from a larger version of the engine. The final engine design produces 0.5 MWe and has a mass of 1006 kg. This is now consistent with the system masses presented in Table 6. Vehicle Power and Payloads.
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: the future of space propulsion, the history and benefits of field-reversed configurations and how they compare with other fusion reactor concepts, mass and power budget considerations of a fusion rocket, and the road ahead for research and development to get us to a prototype for space. We additionally talk about terrestrial (on earth) applications of the PFRC concept as a globally-deployable power plant for remote areas and look forward to even more futuristic space concepts that could follow after the PFRC.
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 aircraft that will survey Titan. The paper includes a detailed design of the aircraft and analysis of optimal entry into the atmosphere and landing on the moon’s surface.
Fusion-propelled transfer vehicle shown in orbit around Titan. The transfer vehicle would serve as an orbital science platform and communications relay to Earth. The 2.4 MW fusion reactor provides 1.4 MW of thrust power and 100 kW of electric power.Fusion-powered electric aircraft for Titan science exploration. The aircraft has six ducted fan engines. The onboard reactor provides 500 kW of electric power.
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 SpacedVentures!
I worked on two projects during my winter internship at Princeton Satellite Systems: a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) launch vehicle design proposal related to the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) and a satellite conjunction maneuver demo. These both used the Spacecraft Control Toolbox for MATLAB.
One of the main ideas behind the TSTO launch vehicle project is to propose an all-liquid variant of the SLS. Currently, the SLS first stage is mostly powered by two solid rocket boosters (SRB) upgraded from the Space Shuttle SRBs. However, our proposal is to replace the two SRBs with five liquid boosters (LB), each mated with an RS-25 engine. The second stage would remain the same. Using MATLAB, I analyzed the launch and trajectory performance of both variants and found similar performance. Additionally, the total mass of the all-liquid SLS variant would be approximately two-thirds the mass of the SRB-powered spacecraft. An approximate CAD model of the all-liquid SLS version is shown below.
In addition, the LBs can be used independently to power smaller high-performance TSTO launch vehicles that carry around 8,000 kg of payload to low earth orbit. Trajectory plots and a preliminary CAD model are shown below.
My other project this internship was to help out with a satellite conjunction avoidance demo with Ms. Stephanie Thomas. The goal was to create a solution in MATLAB to identify potential satellite-debris conjunctions and develop a method/algorithm to avoid the conjunctions. I mainly worked on testing the code and relevant functions and providing feedback about the solution’s comprehensiveness.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this internship and the opportunity to work at PSS. I saw firsthand how even a small company can make significant contributions to aerospace and engineering through diverse interests yet specific, impressive skill sets.
Our latest paper on DFD applications, “A Fusion-Propelled Transportation System to Produce Terrestrial Power Using Helium-3 From Uranus”, is now available from AIAA. This paper was part of the Future Flight Propulsion track and AIAA SciTech 2023. For those with AIAA membership, there is a video recording of the presentation as well! Download the paper here.
Our goal with this paper is to create a framework within which we can study the potential cost of electricity produced on Earth using helium-3 mined from Uranus. The scarcity of terrestrial helium-3, along with the radioactivity of methods to breed it, lead to extraterrestrial sources being considered as a means to enable clean helium-3 fusion for grid-scale electricity on Earth.
This paper builds on the work of Bryan Palaszewski who has published numerous papers on mining the atmospheres of the outer planets. Palaszewski’s work assumed fission-based power and propulsion systems, with a much lower (worse) specific power than we anticipate from a PFRC-based Direct Fusion Drive. We consider both transport and mining vehicles that are instead fusion-powered, including a fusion ramjet. This ramjet may be able to be both the mining vehicle and the orbital transfer vehicle to bring the refined helium-3 to the interplanetary transport,
Components of a conceptual fusion-propelled and -powered Uranus atmospheric mining infrastructure
The results allow us to estimate levelized cost of electricity, LCOE, for the electricity produced on Earth as a function of assumed cost of the fusion transports and mining system, cost of the PFRC reactors, amount of helium-3 stored on each transport and numbers of trips per year, etc. You can learn more about LCOE from the NREL website. Uranus is likely the most economical outer planet for mining due to its lower gravity and radiation environment and high concentration of helium in its atmosphere, about 15%. We find that with our set of assumptions, the resulting cost of electricity could potentially be competitive with wind and solar.
Future work will include analysis of the fusion ramjet trajectories between mining and transfer altitudes, and research into sizing a mining payload using membranes and adsorption to separate the helium-3 from the helium, rather than depend on heavy cryogenic techniques.
Annie Price, who was an intern at Princeton Satellite Systems during the summer of 2021, presented our paper, “Nuclear Fusion Powered Titan Aircraft,” at session C4,10-3.5 which was the Joint Session on Advanced and Nuclear Power and Propulsion Systems.
There were many interesting papers. One was on generating electric power in the magnetic nozzle of a pulsed fusion engine. Another was on the reliability of nuclear thermal engines. The lead-off paper was on a centrifugal nuclear thermal engine with liquid fission fuel.
Annie’s paper covered the design of a Titan aircraft that can both do hypersonic entry and operate at subsonic speeds. Her design uses a 1 MWe nuclear fusion power plant based on PFRC and six electric propeller engines.
She discussed the aerodynamic design, why Titan is so interesting and how the available power would enable new scientific studies of Titan. Annie also described how a PFRC rocket engine or power plant operates. She included a slide on our latest results.
The paper was well received. She had a couple of good questions after her talk and engaged in interesting discussions after the session. Great job Annie!
IAC 2022 is underway! Annie Price, a former PSS intern, and Mike Paluszek are attending. The Congress has hundreds of technical talks and poster presentations. In addition, there is a huge technology showcase area. Both companies and government organizations have booths. Here are some photos from the show floor.
A 1 N green propellant thruster. It is a few centimeters in length.
I also met engineers from Boeing, DLR, Teledyne, Lockheed Martin, MDA, Sierra, Rolls-Royce, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Slovakia, Sweden, and many other companies and countries. There were at least three robot arms on display, including one by Kinetik Space.
This one has selectable end-effectors.
I met an engineer who worked on the Apollo program. His area was radiation hardness. He said back then, no one knew much about the problem.
There were excellent talks on Tuesday on formation flying and rendezvous. Annie is presenting our talk on a fusion-powered Titan aircraft on Thursday, in SESSION 10-C3.5, Joint Session on Advanced and Nuclear Power and Propulsion Systems,” In W08 at 13:45.
I attended the 2022 HiSST meeting, the 2ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGH-SPEED VEHICLE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, in Bruges, Belgium. Bruges is a lovely city and I highly recommend a visit. It is walkable and has many excellent restaurants, museums, breweries, and chocolate shops.
Our session was on Rotating Detonation Engines. Ralf Deiterding (University of Scotland) and Sarah Mecklem (University of Queensland) were the chairs. There were three talks, mine on “Rotational Detonation Engine for Hypersonic Flight”, a talk by Prof. Deiterding of the University Of Southampton on, “Design and testing of a low mass flow RDE running on ethylene-oxygen,” and one by Yue Huang on, “Study on Fuel Injection and Geometry of Plane-radial Rotating Detonation Combustor.”
Prof. Deiterding’s talk showed his team’s impressive experimental work. He had movies of their experiments in operation.
Yue Huang discussed fuel injection into an RDE showing the pros and cons of three different approaches. His team’s work looked at mixing in the combustor instead of pre-mixing.
My talk gave an overview of RDE technology. I discussed research at Princeton University on the stabilization of the RDE flame front. Good results have been obtained with ozone injection and plasma injection. I gave the results of our analysis showing performance advantages over a conventional turboramjet. We use a turbocharger to pressure the RDE at low Mach number.
I discussed applications including hypersonic boost guide passenger airliners and two stage to orbit launch vehicles. An RDE might allow first-stage Mach numbers in excess of Mach 7.
On Thursday the Conference dinner was held. It was a three course dinner at a restaurant on the North Sea. The rain cleared for the event.
The venue was beautiful. A band played throughout the reception and dinner.
It was announced that the 2024 HiSST meeting will be held in Pusan, South Korea.
My name is Pavit Hooda, and I was an intern at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory during the summer of 2022. In my time there, I took on the start-up problem of the Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) and developed a compelling solution. A system to power on or re-start the DFD in space is essential for its use, especially in long-duration missions. Therefore, my work has helped us get closer to a space-faring future where the DFD is the means of propulsion for humanity’s missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Artist’s Rendering of the DFD on a Mission to Mars
The problem at hand was to create an auxiliary power unit that can generate a sufficient amount of power with the use of the Deuterium fuel and liquid Oxygen oxidizer that were on board. The Deuterium is one of the fuels of the fusion within the DFD, and the Oxygen can be recycled from the cabin of the crew. After the power is generated, the objective is to eventually split the deuterium-oxide product back into its constituents for use in their respective areas of the spacecraft. This electrolysis can be done after the fusion core is started and there is a sufficient amount of surplus energy from the DFDs.
The design of the heat engine first begins with the electric pumps that feed the fuel and the oxidizer into the combustion chamber. A turbopump-based feeding system was decided against due to the low mass flow rates that are required to power the DFD. Additionally, the accurate throttle control granted by the use of electric pumps, and the ability to use the batteries on board to spin the pumps, make electric pumps the more viable option. Before the deuterium fuel is fed into the coaxial swirl injector, it is ran across cooling channels surrounding the combustion chamber. This regenerative cooling is performed to heat the deuterium to increase its reactivity and lengthen the lifespan of the combustion chamber by minimizing the effect of the high temperature it is operating at. Additionally, the cooling system provides a healthy temperature gradient for the thermoelectric generation layer that is also wrapped around the combustion chamber. The oxidizer is directly injected into the combustion from its propellant tank.
After passing through the injector and combusting in a successful ignition, the deuterium-oxide steam exhaust is directed towards a turbine system. The turbine system and the combustion chamber are attached with a flange. The turbine system consists of two sets of blades that are separated by a disk that acts like a stator in a steam turbine. The exhaust is first directed towards a doughnut-shaped casing that allows for the heavy water steam to hit the blades in a direction that is parallel to the blade disk’s central normal axis. The two turbine disks are attached to a common axis that extends outside the turbine system’s casing. The rotation of this axle is then used to generate power with an electric generator. Finally, the steam then exits through a large exhaust manifold tube that directs it to a temporary storage container. This design of a heat engine would result in producing 3 MJ, the sufficient amount of power to start up a PFRC, in about 10 minutes. An illustration of the entire design of this system can be seen below.
CAD model of the heat engine
In the pursuit to study the feasibility of this engine, various parts were selected. A 600 W electric generator that matches both the power and mass specifications of the heat engine was found and is shown below.
600 Watt Power Generator
Additionally, the turbine casing in the heat engine matches the geometry and function of a turbocharger that is found as a component in some car engines. The part is displayed below.
Turbocharger component
A significant amount of extensive work still needs to be put into the creation of this heat engine. However, I truly believe that this work presents itself as a good first step in the right direction towards this engine’s small but significant role in humanity’s journey to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
