https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell and relat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell and related You can very much do table-top fusion in your garage if you like. You just won't get net energy out of it -- far from it. But if you're interested in higher ISPs for deep space rocket engines, then the fact that this isn't energy efficient might not matter to you -- getting enough extra delta-v for your propellant and reactor/thruster might well justify the expense. The real problem is that the electric power needed to run such fusors has to come from somewhere, and in deep space the hardest thing to do is to cool that something, though here I suppose a fusion-enhanced thruster might be able to use propellant as coolant for a fission reactor that generates the electrical power for the fusor that add enough additional heating to the propellant to make this workable.