Pulsar Firm startup launched the Sunbird missile, designed to meet the spacecraft in orbit, attached to it and brought it to the destination at a rapid speed at a thermonuclear reaction.
Sunbird missile drawing. Image: Pulsar Fusion
According to Richard Dinan, founder and CEO of Pulsar, Sunbird is in the initial construction stage with funding from the British space agency and has many technical challenges to overcome, but the company hopes to be able to perform thermonuclear reactions on the first time in 2027. If this missile comes into operation, one day it can cut half of the flight duties to the Fire mission, according to the Fire mission, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire mission, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire Star, according to the Fire Flight CNN.
Heat lymphadenopathy is different from fission reaction in current nuclear power plants. The fission reaction works through heavy radioactive elements such as uranium into lighter elements, using neutrons. Huge energy released during the process is used to produce electricity. The thermonuclear reaction takes place in the opposite direction when combining very light elements such as Hydro into more severe elements, using high temperatures and pressure.
The thermonuclear reaction becomes the target of realization of the researchers because it releases energy 4 times more than the fertilizer reaction and 4 million times that of fossil fuel. Different from fission reaction, lymphadenopathy reaction does not require dangerous radioactive materials, but only using deuterium and tritium, hydrogen atoms with additional neutrons. It works with small fuels and does not produce dangerous waste.
However, the thermonuclear reaction needs a lot of energy to start, due to the need to create the same conditions of the core of a star that is extremely high temperature and pressure, along with effective control to maintain the reaction. The challenge for researchers on Earth is to create more energy from thermonuclear reactions than the intake.
The reaction produces thermonuclear energy takes place inside the plasma, hot air. Similar to the reactors proposed on Earth, Sunbird will use strong magnets to heat the plasma and create conditions for collision and consolidation. While the ovens have a circular shape to prevent seed loss, on Sunbird, the reactor will be straightened by the seeds that will help push the spacecraft.
Instead of creating neutrons from the thermonuclear reaction that the reactor on Earth is used to produce heat, Sunbird will use more expensive fuel than Heli-3 to create protons, which can be used to provide thrust. The reaction process on Sunbird will be expensive and not suitable for energy production on Earth. But because Pulsar’s goals do not have to produce energy, this process may be less effective and expensive, but it is still useful because it will save fuel costs, reduce the weight of the spacecraft and bring the ship to the destination much faster.
Sunbird will operate similar to the city bicycle at the stations. “We launch the missile into space and have a stop, where the rocket can wait to see the spacecraft. Customers can turn off the internal combustion engine inefficiently and use the thermonuclear energy in most of the journey. In 2027, we will bring a small part of Sunbird into trajectory to check whether the physical mechanism works as a predictable computer,” Dinan shared.
That prototype will cost about 70 million USD and not the full Sunbird missile version but the experiment to prove the concept. The first Sunbird model will be available first after 4-5 years if there is sufficient funding. According to Pulsar, Sunbird can perform a number of tasks such as carrying 2,000 kg of goods to Mars in less than 6 months, deploying a exploration ship to Jupiter or Saturn in 2-4 years (NASA’s Europa Clipper launched in 2024 to the Saturn Moon, which will fly 5.5 years) and complete the recovery flight to the planet near the Earth in 1-2 years instead of the current 3.
Bhuvana Srinivasan, a spacecraft professor at the University of Washington, said that the rocket was boosted by the extremely beneficial thermonuclear reaction for the trip to the Moon by providing vehicles to deploy the entire base in a mission. Exploiting the thrust from the thermonuclear reaction not only allows people to fly further in the universe, but also changes the missions of unmanned such as collecting Helium-3 resources that can be abundant on the moon.