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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
J. B. McBride, N. A. Uckan, R. J. Kashuba
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 497-501
Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22912
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper summarizes the results of a preliminary assessment of energetic ion rings for use in an ELMO Bumpy Torus (EBT) reactor. The properties of ion rings are compared with those of electron rings. Ion rings appear to require sizable devices and magnetic field strengths for stable, adiabatic confinement. Stable windows for steady-state ion ring operation having acceptable power requirements, determined mainly by Coulomb drag on the background electrons, appear to exist for EBT reactors. Power requirements for ion rings can be quantitatively lower than those for electron rings, provided the ion ring volume does not greatly exceed the electron ring volume. Some stability properties of ion rings are also discussed. Results of parametric trade-off studies for ion rings versus electron rings using an EBT reactor systems code are presented.