Whilst the Saturnbros are awaiting Direct Fusion from Princeton, a few days ago various outlets have been relaying some press-releases about the FireStar from RocketStar. Where Direct Fusion is NERVA-ish, FireStar is Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Electric Propulsion
- so, more Orion-ish. The (boron) fusion is happening in its afterburner.
As Pixy pointed out yesterday, the device does spray ionising radiation all over the place
. Keyword, in his Kiwi dialect: "ionising"; that is: not neutrons. (Yay boron!) Ions, we can handle, with magnets.
Now, I don't think anyone will allow RocketStar to use this to get us off of Earth, for the usual test-ban reasons. "RocketStar"'s clickbaity name, and this poast's title, all aside: should we even call it a rocket? But limited Orion above the Van Allens might not face the same regulatory hurdles. Certainly TLL2 wouldn't.
So first we need to get this stuff up there.
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