/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10893759
Another candidate would be the direct fusion drive that uses field reverse configuration to get the plasma to fuse. As with both of these designs, both of them can take cold reaction mass if you wanna go really fast while still keeping the efficiency still somewhat in the ballpark of fusion/fission drives.

>>10733055
This is currently our best bet for a Fusion powered rocket. It is based on a field-reversed configuration reactor. Using the plasma itself as reaction mass in the form of an ion drive afterburner that can shift gears from low(250 N of thrust and around 5,000 sec Isp) to high gear(5 N of thrust and around 50,000 sec Isp). Along with running He and Xe in Boron tubes and then running that through a Brayton cycle generator to generate its own energy as well. With the Fusion reactor generating around 10-20 MW of power total. All while being only around 2 meters in Diameter and 10 meters in Length. In my opinion, this design could even be used for much higher thrusts if they added more reaction mass to be heated by the plasma and shot out the magnetic nozzle such as more Hydrogen or Methane to give a metric fuck-ton of thrust at the cost of exhaust velocity for quicker flight times and for even some possible launch vehicle usage....Minus the whole spewing radiation thing.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#toroidalfusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Fusion_Drive

http://www.psatellite.com/tag/dfd/