One of the main methods to obtain energy from controlled thermonuclear fusion is inertial confinement fusion (ICF), a process where nuclear fusion reactions are initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet that contains deuterium and tritium, relying on the inertia of the fuel mass to provide confinement. In inertial confinement fusion experiments, it is...

A radical new Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) concept, the Magnetically-Channeled Spherical-IEC Array (MCSA) fusion propulsion system, was proposed earlier for use in the high performance Space Ship II fusion propulsion ship (Burton, 2003). This ship was designed for a fast manned round trip mission to Jupiter. The MCSA fusion power plant represents a key enabling technology needed for...

Nuclear fusion technologies have re-gained momentum in the last decade thanks to their disruptive potential different fields, such as energy production and space propulsion, new technological developments, especially high temperature superconductor tapes, which allow overcoming previous performance or design limits. To date, reviews of recent nuclear designs are lacking. Therefore, this paper a...