Pulsar Fusion unveils vision for ‘Sunbird’ nuclear rocket to reach Mars in half the time (video)

[Admin]

Pulsar Fusion just released a video showcasing its planned Sunbird nuclear fusion rocket, which is designed to reach speeds of about 329,000 mph (500,000 kph).

Pulsar Fusion unveils vision for ‘Sunbird’ nuclear rocket to reach Mars in half the time (video) : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am hoping this technology can be made to work. It does have the best underlying physical concept. It gets its energy from its propellant - but nuclear energy, not chemical energy - so a lot more energy providing a lot more potential.

Other propulsion concepts that I keep seeing in the news, particularly "ion drives" being worked on by Russia and China, are touted (in the media) for being "more efficient". But, they are low thrust, and need a powerful energy source in addition to make a real vehicle.

For instance, the Russian version needs a 300 Kw power source to produce about 1.25 pounds of thrust. That would have to be scaled up substantially to put any useful amount of payload into Mars orbit.

Where does that energy come from? To get it with solar panels, it would take about a square kilometer of panels to produce 1000 pounds of thrust. So, probably going to require a nuclear fission reactor to make it work at the scale needed. But, that adds to total vehicle weight.

So, instead of just looking at "specific impulse", which is only the amount of thrust created with the amount of propellant used per second, we need to consider the total system impulse to measure the total amount of thrust x time from the total capacity of the propellant carried against the total weight of the vehicle.

So, the nice thing about the fusion engine concept is that it achieves the thrust using the energy in the propellant, instead of carrying an additional energy producing mechanism. It still requires some system weight to make it work, but it should be lighter than an fission reactor + shielding or square kilometers of solar panels.