Author: Michael Paluszek
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Submarine Supplier Days 2023
I attended Submarine Supplier Days 2023 in Washington, D.C. March 7 and 8. It is an opportunity for companies contributing to building the latest attack and ballistic missile submarines to get together. The two big programs are for the Columbia Class fleet ballistic missile submarine and the Virginia Class attack submarines. Australia will be buying…
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Ford Mach-E on the Road
One of the biggest concerns people have with electric vehicles is charging. We’ve taken our Mach-E on two trips with different approaches to charging. Our experience is with a rear-wheel drive Mach-E with the extended range battery. Its EPA range is 303 miles. The first was from Princeton to the Berkshires, then to Boston and…
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PFRC Article in the Journal of Fusion Energy
Our latest paper, The Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration for Compact Nuclear Fusion Power Plants, is available in the Journal of Fusion Energy, Volume 42, Issue 1, June 2023. This paper is the first released in “The emergence of Private Fusion Enterprises” collection. A view-only version is available for free here. Our paper gives an overview of…
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Our Visit to ITER in the South of France
On September 22 Marilyn, Eric, and I visited ITER, the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, about 45 minutes from Aix-en-Provence. We took the TGV from Paris to Aix-en-Provence. Our tour started with a talk by Akko Maas who gave a great presentation on fusion. He talked about building ITER. The complexity of the…
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Annie Price Presents, “Nuclear Fusion Powered Titan Aircraft” at IAC 2022 in Paris France
Annie Price, who was an intern at Princeton Satellite Systems during the summer of 2021, presented our paper, “Nuclear Fusion Powered Titan Aircraft,” at session C4,10-3.5 which was the Joint Session on Advanced and Nuclear Power and Propulsion Systems. There were many interesting papers. One was on generating electric power in the magnetic nozzle of…
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International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2022 in Paris, France
IAC 2022 is underway! Annie Price, a former PSS intern, and Mike Paluszek are attending. The Congress has hundreds of technical talks and poster presentations. In addition, there is a huge technology showcase area. Both companies and government organizations have booths. Here are some photos from the show floor. The green propellant thruster is from…
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2022 HiSST Meeting in Bruges, Belgium
I attended the 2022 HiSST meeting, the 2ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGH-SPEED VEHICLE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, in Bruges, Belgium. Bruges is a lovely city and I highly recommend a visit. It is walkable and has many excellent restaurants, museums, breweries, and chocolate shops. Our session was on Rotating Detonation Engines. Ralf Deiterding (University of Scotland)…
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Nuclear Thermal Propulsion to Mars
For orbital transfers to Mars, a Hohmann transfer is often proposed since it minimizes the fuel consumed. Here is what that looks like. This was generated by the Spacecraft Control Toolbox function DVHoh.m. 255.2 days is a long time for a crew to be exposed to cosmic radiation. NASA has proposed using a nuclear thermal…
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PFRC Fusion Article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
This is a really excellent article on nuclear fusion, “Small-scale fusion tackles energy, space applications,” by M. Mitchell Waldrop, written January 28, 2020, Vol 117, No. 4 for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). The article quotes team Dr. Cohen and Mr. Paluszek and provides an…
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The HiSST and IAC Conferences
I’ll be attending two conferences in Europe this September. The first is HiSST, the 2nd International Conference on High-Speed Science and Technology, 11-15 September in Bruges, Belgium. Our paper is “Rotational Detonation Engine for Hypersonic Flight.” My co-authors areDr. Christopher Galea, Mr. Miles Simpkins, Dr. Yiguang Ju, and Dr. Mikhail Shneider. The last three authors…