tokamaks are reactors which use thermal input and super-powered magnets to convert a cocktail of relatively abundant hydrogen isotopes into a self-sustaining plasma of unimaginable heat and radiance. Researchers are fine-tuning tokamaks at various labs around the globe, hunting for energy breakeven, the tipping point where the plasma in the tokamak generates at least as much energy from fusion as it requires in externally supplied thermal energy. Once breakeven has been achieved, mankind will be on the cusp of a limitless source of clean, self-sustaining energy, which for any number of reasons will be extremely bitchin’, at least until the science is bought by venture capitalists and sold back to the public at a price that effectively makes its owners gods. //

We have been assured by several researchers that whatever else is true about the development of tokamak science, the jillion-degree star juice in the core of the reactor can not be fired or ejected or otherwise expelled from the torus, due to physics or chemistry or whatever, and therefore cannot cause Chernobyl-like cataclysms. //

But now a PPPL researcher—one Fatima Ebrahimi, pictured above (right)—has designed a new “plasmoid rocket” concept which applies the ultra magnets and so forth of tokamaks in such a way that superheated plasma is used to generate thrust and propel a rocket through space, thus solving one of the most vexing challenges associated with manned travel into deep space: storing enough fuel to power a spacecraft all the way from Earth to Mars. Ebrahimi’s rocket concept harnesses both the juice of the Sun and the mechanics of solar flares to do magical magnet things and go vroom through space.

The new Princeton concept works by using the same mechanism that helps to blast solar flares away from the Sun. These flares consist of charged atoms and particles called plasma, which are trapped inside powerful magnetic fields where complex interactions take place.

For propulsion systems, Ebrahimi is particularly interested in one type of interaction called magnetic reconnection, which is where magnetic fields in highly charged plasmas restructure themselves to converge, separate, and re-converge. As they do so, they generate large amounts of kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. It’s a phenomenon not only seen on the Sun, but also in the Earth’s atmosphere and inside Tokamak fusion reactors, like PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX).

https://newatlas.com/space/magnetic-reconnection-rocket-thruster-concept-spaceflight-mars