Reply To: Great News!

[Ivy Matt]

In fact, one of the other presentations, by Tarditi, Miley, and Scott, reminded me of the DPF. It’s titled “Aneutronic Fusion Spacecraft Architecture”, and advocates a fusion thruster design that uses the fusion products directly for the production of thrust. With such a design, the efficient production of electricity (and therefore net energy gain) is unnecessary. For this application, the main thing you need is a beam of fusion products. Of course, the concept favored by Tarditi, Miley, and Scott uses an inertial electrostatic confinement device in “jet mode”, but it occurred to me that a DPF could be used for the same purpose. Note that the presentation uses the phrase “direct conversion” in the sense of converting fusion energy directly to thrust, rather than to electricity.