Land of Gregs

Another day, another chance at nuclear fusion. A group at the Plasma Dynamics lab at the University of Washington have come up with a variation on the z-pinch version of plasma confinement fusion. In other words, they take some fusible material (usually a light atom like hydrogen/tritium/deuterium and or helium), and then squish it (in this case, using aluminium or lithium ringlets of plasma) until the nuclei of the material fuses together, releasing energy.
The way they’re selling this method is to reduce the amount of time it takes to get to Mars. Using current methods, it takes about 8-9 months each way. The way in which this method achieves fusion also propels plasma out of the fusion chamber, providing thrust. They estimate that by triggering a fusion event once a minute, that thrust would be enough to shorten the trip to Mars to between 1-3 months, which would be much easier on any human crew that might decide to go along.
This summer, they intend to put all the parts of their fusion implementation (which appear to work fine on their own) together, and hopefully it’ll help move humanity forward if it works.