Fusion-electric propulsion for hypersonic flight
H. David Froning Jr. · Robert W. Bussard
Summary and citation · read the original at the source
In one page
In 1993, at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference in Monterey, H. David Froning Jr. and Robert Bussard proposed flying an aeroplane on fusion. Bussard’s own line of work is the starting point: hold a cloud of light nuclei in an electrostatic well and squeeze them together with voltage rather than with a magnet or a laser, until enough of them fuse. Choose the right light isotopes and the reactions give back charged particles and no neutrons at all, which is what makes the idea flyable — no neutron shielding, no activated airframe. From that the two authors build a propulsion argument. Reactions like these can be made to deliver several times the thrust per unit of fuel flow that burning chemicals gives, at engine thrust-to-weight ratios an aerospace plane can carry. The payoff they calculate is a several-fold gain in how much payload a single vehicle can put in orbit, and hypersonic flight that is easy on the environment it flies through.
Why it matters hereChapter 12 says the first bottleneck in every advanced-propulsion story is a small, dense source of energy, and this paper is one of the earliest places where that argument is made in aircraft terms rather than power-station terms. Chapter 8 gets the shape of the vehicle that follows: once the energy is aboard and the exhaust is charged particles rather than combustion products, the design question stops being how much propellant to carry and becomes how much power to handle.
What it claims
01Bussard’s studies show that the charged nuclei of certain light-element isotopes can be electrostatically compressed to a density sufficient for nuclear fusion to occur — that is, the confinement is done with voltage rather than with magnetic bottles or laser implosion.Abstract, first sentence
Published and peer-reviewed02The fusion reactions available to those nuclei emit no neutrons and induce no radioactivity, which is the property that makes an airborne reactor plausible at all: no neutron shield to carry and no activated structure left behind.Abstract, second sentence
Published and peer-reviewed03Such clean fusion reactions can develop four to eight times more engine thrust per unit of fuel flow rate than chemical reactions can.Abstract, third sentence
Designed, not yet built04The engine thrust-to-weight ratios that go with those reactions fall in the three to six range, which is the band an aerospace plane can actually be built around.Abstract, third sentence
Designed, not yet built05Applied to an earth-to-orbit aerospace plane, fusion-electric propulsion would give a two-fold to five-fold improvement in payload delivery efficiency over the chemical baseline.Abstract, closing sentence
Designed, not yet built06The same propulsion would make environmentally favourable hypersonic flight achievable, because the reaction products are charged particles from light isotopes rather than combustion exhaust.Abstract, closing sentence; title
What to watch
The way in
https://doi.org/10.2514/6.1993-2611SOURCE NOT REACHED. Conference paper AIAA 93-2611, presented at the 29th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, Monterey, California, 28 June 1993. The paper is closed at the publisher and the AIAA Aerospace Research Central site refuses automated readers behind a browser challenge, so no text of it is reproduced here and none was read. Crossref, OpenAlex and OpenAIRE all carry the same deposited abstract, and that copy is itself a damaged scrape — its ligatures and hyphens have been eaten, so words such as ‘sufficient’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘reactions’ arrive broken and the numeric ranges have lost their dashes. Because the only reachable copy of the author’s own words is corrupted, this page reproduces none of it and is written as a summary only. Every claim below is drawn from the substance of that deposited abstract and is labelled Abstract in its locator; nothing here comes from the body of the paper. Author affiliations as deposited: H. David Froning Jr., Flight Unlimited, Flagstaff, Arizona; Robert W. Bussard, Energy/Matter Conversion Corporation, Manassas, Virginia.
How to cite it
H. David Froning Jr., Robert W. Bussard (1993) Fusion-electric propulsion for hypersonic flight. doi:10.2514/6.1993-2611
Where it sits in the curriculum
Fusion machines: pinches, focus devices and inertial driversInertial mass reduction, the Navy patents and transmedium craft