The Interstellar Fusion Fuel Resource Base of Our Solar System

R. G. Kennedy (2018), JBIS, 71, pp.298-305

Refcode: 2018.71.298
Keywords: Elemental Abundance, Aneutronic fuels, Fusion Fuels, Resource Base, Solar System

Abstract:
If a self-propelled ship is going to get to another star in less than many millennia, humanity will need vast quantities of highly energetic fusion fuels. Even fission will not do the job. However, the ten lightest fusion chain reactions that the human race knows about (some of which have sub-chains, and five of which involve hydrogen) have major, engineering, energetics or logistics liabilities. In 1985’s Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience ed. by Finney & Jones, William K. Hartman presented “Resource Base of the Solar System”. In this work we repeat his approach 32 years later in order to estimate the human race’s patrimony of aneutronic fuels suitable for interstellar flight, fusion fuels, and the total number of missions that could fly.