In the trenchesA device used to measure nuclear weapons effects is now used for rocket propulsion system

Can a device formerly used to test nuclear weapons effects find a new life in rocket propulsion research? That is the question in which researchers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville seek an answer.

A new massive device is being assembled at the university’s Aerophysics Research Center on Redstone Arsenal, where a team of scientists and researchers from UAHuntsville’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Boeing, and Marshall Space Flight Center’s Propulsion Engineering Lab are busy putting together a strange looking machine they’re calling the “Charger-1 Pulsed Power Generator.” It is a key element in furthering the development of nuclear fusion technology to drive spacecraft.

A University of Alabama, Huntsville release reports that the huge apparatus, known as the Decade Module Two (DM2) in its earlier life, was used on a contract with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for research into the effects of nuclear weapons explosions.

UAHuntsville was first informed about its availability in 2009, several years after the research contract for which it was originally designed came to an end.

Reassembling several huge pieces of industrial equipment, the components were delivered in five shipments to the Aerophysics Research Center from San Leandro, California. When assembled, the unit will tip the scales at nearly fifty tons, and will be “one of the largest, most powerful pulse power systems in the academic world,” according to university officials.

With all units now in place, UAHuntsville engineering professor and project head Dr. Jason Cassibry says the team is busy cleaning up the components, which picked “a lot of dirt” after sitting in a lab for nearly 10 years, then being shipped across the country.

Refurbishment will include replacement of about 100 large resistors, and securing 15,000 gallons of transformer oil for the Marx tank, which holds the capacitors and prevents arcing between them.

“That’s a big hurdle, but we’ll get there,” says Cassibry.

“We’re interested in deep space exploration,” Cassibry says. “Right now humans are stuck in low earth orbit, but we want to explore the solar system. We’re trying to come up with a system that will demonstrate ‘break even’ for thermonuclear propulsion.”

Despite the hydrogen bomb images this machine may evoke, Cassibry cautions it is completely safe.

More importantly, research using the Charger-1 pulse power generator could change the entire way rockets are propelled and revolutionize space travel.

Since the dawn of spaceflight in the late 1950s, the world’s rockets have relied on chemical reactions of various fuels, such