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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.
M. E. Fenstermacher, N. A. Uckan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 502-506
Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22913
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A formalism has been developed in terms of a drift kinetic equation with a Fokker-Planck collision operator to calculate alpha particle loss and energy deposition rate coefficients for one position in space and for steady-state operating conditions in an ELMO Bumpy Torus (EBT) reactor. Pitch angle and energy scattering terms were retained in the collision term so that the analysis provides information on alpha particle behavior due to pitch angle scattering into loss regions in velocity space and information on alpha energy deposition during slowing down in the device. A square well magnetic field shape is assumed and the resulting particle loss rates and energy deposition rates are calculated. For typical EBT reactor parameters, results show that while 80-90% of the alpha particles are scattered into a pitch angle loss region and lost from the device, more than 70% of the alpha particle energy is deposited in the core plasma and about 1–2% goes to alphas retained in the plasma as ash. Parametric studies are performed, and the sensitivity to plasma potential, the pitch angle, the width of loss regions, and computational procedures are analyzed.