Large-bore, superconducting magnets for high-energy density propellant storage

Abstract

A study has been conducted on the design of large-bore, superconducting solenoid magnets in an effort to determine how weight and cost scales with field and size. The fields considered ranged from 0.5 to 20 T and bore sizes from 3 to 10 m. the designs are based on light-weight, high-performance superconducting magnet designs using cable-in-conduit niobium-titanium and niobium-tin conductors. All methods to reduce the weight of the magnets are used, and both aluminum and stainless steel are considered for the structure. With the length of the magnets fixed at 10 m, the amount and cost of the conductor is determined for each field and bore size. The largest magnets are determined for each field value that have weights under lo4, lo5, and lo6 kg. The cost scales as the square root of stored energy and in millions of dollars is twice the product of field (T) and bore (m).

Solid hydrogen experiments for atomic propellants

“…Figure 1 shows the potential benefits of atomic hydrogen rockets for Earth launch missions (Refs. [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Using a 15-wt.…”