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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.
Edward A. Lazarus, Michael C. Zarnstorff, Stuart R. Hudson, Long-Poe Ku, Douglas C. McCune, David R. Mikkelsen, Donald A. Monticello, Neil Pomphrey, Allen H. Reiman
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 209-214
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A557
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is demonstrated that there exists a plausible evolution of the discharge from the vacuum state to the desired high beta state with the self-consistent bootstrap current profile. The discharge evolution preserves stability and has adequate quasi axisymmetry along this trajectory. The study takes advantage of the quasi-axisymmetric nature of the device to model the evolution of flux and energy in two dimensions. The plasma confinement is modeled to be consistent with empirical scaling. The ohmic circuit, the plasma density, and the timing of the neutral beam heating control the poloidal flux evolution. The resulting pressure and current density profiles are then used in a three-dimensional optimization to find the desired sequence of equilibria. In order to obtain this sequence, active control of the helical and poloidal fields is required. These results are consistent with the planned power systems for the magnets.