Engineering Design and Testing of the HelicitySpace Novel Rocket Concept

Engineering design, hardware, and test results for a novel fusion propulsion experiment proposed by HelicitySpace in collaboration with the Caltech and UMBC research teams are presented. The Helicity Drive is a novel magneto-inertial fusion propulsion concept for deep space travel. Theoretical design of a peristaltic compressor to adiabatically compress plasma preheated by magnetic reconnection is used to determine coil parameters for this design. The nozzle consists of twenty Bitter-type magnets that are modeled as a transmission line and are ultimately meant to compress merging plasma jets by forming a double-peaked traveling pulse. The tabletop experiment version that is being constructed at UMBC will be operated first without plasma to test and compare with theoretical predictions of the transmission line performance including system inductance, impedance, and magnetic field generation. A computer program as a signal generator, connected to an amplifier, is used to generate current waveforms in the transmission line similar to those that will be used in future experiments with plasma.

This work was carried out in collaboration with and with support from the HelicitySpace Corporation.