As an indirect mechanism for triggering more powerful reactions that could be used as the primary drive, I think so. My dream spaceship has a fusion engine and

As an indirect mechanism for triggering more powerful reactions that could be used as the primary drive, I think so. My dream spaceship has a fusion engine and VASIMR drive, a kind of variable ion thruster, for variable thrust from takeoff to ~.1c speeds. But fusion reactions are hard to ignite and sustain. Putting a tokamak in a spaceship might be possible, but they weren't really designed to scale down. Fusion reactions require energies in the MeV range to ignite, but that's with perfect conversion. I'd like the flexibility up to GeV range, or many small 100 MeV units in parallel like this accelerator or the BELLA & kBELLA at Berkeley[kBELLA]. These can also be chained. Cascading wavefront accelerators appear to be the most compact way to achieve scale for high energy particle beams, perhaps combined with lattice-confinement-based fuels[lc-fusion]. Berkeley is also developing software to model "multi-TeV high-energy physics colliders based on tens to thousands of plasma-based accelerator stages."[warpx] Cuz your spaceship needs a laser gun too, right? [kBELLA] https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2021/12/06/fiber-lasers-poised-to-advance-berkeley-labs-development-of-practical-laser-plasma-accelerators/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2021/12/06/fiber-lasers-poised-to... [lc-fusion] https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-confinement-fusion/ https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-confinement-... [warpx] https://www.exascaleproject.org/research-project/warpx/ https://www.exascaleproject.org/research-project/warpx/