The Gevaltig: An inertial fusion powered manned spacecraft design for outer solar system missions

The Gevaltig is an inertial fusion powered rocket engine capable of manned missions to other planets with round trip mission times as low as 100 days. The Gevaltig design was previously described for a mission to Mars. This effort defines the spacecraft components in terms of mass and presents a mission analysis for a manned trip to Titan, a moon of Saturn. The Gevaltig component masses are provided as a function of fuel pellet ignition frequency. These variable mass components include the fuel tanks, radiators, structure and EM pumps. Fixed mass components include the drivers, coil, coil shield, power processing system, payload, crew shield and laser mirrors. A 6 MW nuclear reactor is included in the design for startup purposes. Various combinations of thrust, mission duration and specific impulse were evaluated to determine a reasonable mission scenario for the Titan mission. The mission analysis yielded several viable mission scenarios, with round trip durations of 370 to 500 days and initial (launch) masses from lunar orbit of 2500 to 20,000 metric tons. 15 refs., 13 figs., 14 tabs