The History of Plasma Drive

It is not as far fetched as it may seem. In the 1950’2 a physicist named Freeman Dyson envisioned using Nuclear Power to send rocket ships to the stars.

His first idea was to literally explode an atomic device inside a rocket, using a concave “Shield” to direct the force of the blast. The one obvious drawback was containing the blast to the rocket itself and not blowing everything to hell. Then he hit upon the idea of using a fusion reactor.

The one major drawback to an engine like this was it could not be used in the atmosphere, but once out in space, it was theorized it could reach sub light speed.

According to Encyclopedia Astronautica, Nuclear thermal engines use the heat of a nuclear reactor to heat a propellant. Although early Russian designs used ammonia or alcohol as propellant, the ideal working fluid for space applications is the liquid form of the lightest element, hydrogen. Nuclear engines would have twice the performance of conventional chemical rocket engines. Although successfully ground-tested in both Russia and America, they have never been flown due primarily to environmental and safety concerns. Liquid hydrogen was identified by all the leading rocket visionaries as the theoretically ideal rocket fuel. It had big drawbacks, however – it was highly cryogenic, and it had a very low density, making for large tanks. The United States mastered hydrogen technology for the highly classified Lockheed CL-400 Suntan reconnaissance aircraft in the mid-1950’s. The technology was transferred to the Centaur rocket stage program, and by the mid-1960’s the United States was flying the Centaur and Saturn upper stages using the fuel. It was adopted for the core of the space shuttle, and Centaur stages still fly today.

In Russia hydrogen fueled upper stages were designed and developed by the mid-1970’s, but the Russians never seem to have found the extra performance to be worth the extra cost. Europe and China developed liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines for upper stages of the Ariane and Long March launch vehicles.

The equilibrium composition of liquid hydrogen is 99.79 per cent parahydrogen and 0.21 per cent orthohydrogen. The boiling point of this composition is -253 deg C. Liquid hydrogen is transparent and without a characteristic odor. Gaseous hydrogen is colorless. Hydrogen is not toxic but is an extremely flammable material. The flammable limits of gaseous hydrogen in air are 4.0 to 75 volume percent.

Hydrogen is produced from by-product hydrogen from petroleum refining and the partial oxidation of fuel oil. The gaseous hydrogen is purified to 99.999+ per cent, and then liquefied in the presence of paramagnetic metallic oxides. The metallic oxides catalyst the ortho-para transformation of freshly liquefied hydrogen. Freshly liquefied hydrogen which has not been catalyzed consists of a 3:1 ortho-para mixture and cannot be stored for any length of time because of the exothermic heat of conversion. The delivered cost of liquid hydrogen in 1960 was approximately $ 2.60 per kg. Large-scale production was expected to reduce the cost to $ 1.00 per kg. In the 1980’s NASA was actually paying $ 3.60 per kg.

In 1994, A Russian design called for a Mars expedition powered by RD-0410 bi-modal nuclear thermal engines. A crew of five would complete the trip to Mars and back in 460 days.

Once again, according to Encyclopedia Astronautica, by the 1980’s test of the experimental RD-0410 nuclear thermal rocket engine had led to a definitive flight design. The design included bimodal use of the nuclear reactor to provide electrical power during dormant or cruise flight phases by means of a Brayton cycle turbine using xenon-helium coolant. The NPO Luch powerplant produced 20,000 kgf, with a thermal power of 1200 MW, operating time of 5 hours, and a specific impulse of between 815 and 927 seconds. During cruise operations the turbine would provide 50-200 kW of electric power, requiring 600 square meters of radiators. Two designs emerged using a cluster of three to four of these engines with a total powerplant mass of 50 to 70 metric tons. The 1989 layout of the Kurchatov Institute surrounded the crew quarters with liquid hydrogen propellant tanks to shield the crew from radiation from the reactors and cosmic rays. The radiators were positioned at the nose of the spacecraft. A more detailed 1994 design from the Keldysh Institute / NII-TP placed the radiators forward of the engines, followed by communications antennae, the living quarters (again surrounded by propellant tanks), followed by two large landing craft (one for Mars, one for Earth) docked laterally at the nose. The crew of five would complete the trip to Mars and back in 460 days. Total time of thrusting engine operation for the 800 metric ton, 84 m long craft was 6 hours.

From fore to aft the spacecraft consisted of:

• The Mars landing craft, in the familiar cylinder with conical nose configuration, 3.8 m in diameter and 13 m long
• The Earth return craft, in the same configuration as the Mars lander.
• The Living Quarters, with a Mir-type spherical docking unit at the nose, 5.5 m in diameter and 33 m long. This was divided into two sections, with a spherical airlock section dividing them. The forward section was equipped with a long manipulator arm for moving landers or modules around the docking unit. A radiation storm cellar was enclosed within the aft section for protection of the crew during solar storms.
• Six 36.5 m long tanks for storage of the liquid hydrogen, arranged around the living quarters. Four containing the earth-boost propellant were 6 m in diameter while two with the Mars braking and departure propellant were 5 m in diameter.
• A 3 m wide spar ran from the base of the crew quarters to the nuclear power plant. The first 18 m of the spar were used to mount communications antennae, followed by an 18 m section with radiators for rejecting reactor heat during cruise operations.
• The final 11.5 m long propulsion section, with 3 or 4 engines

Propellant made up about half of the total starting spacecraft mass.

As you can see, we still have a long way to go to perfect plasma drive. As of 2010, the Russians had not yet reached Mars….

Thanks to Encyclopedia Astronautica for their contributions to this story.

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