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HelicitySpace is a company developing fusion propulsion and power technology necessary for enabling humanity's expansion into the solar system. The company's propulsion and power system is called the Helicity Drive, which merges several plasma plectonemes in a constant-energy compression magnetic nozzle, exploiting the efficiency of magnetic reconnection for heating, the stability of plectonemes for confinement, and the symmetry of passive coils for magnetic compression. The approach can operate at modest fusion gains and scale to ignited operation.
Founded in 2018 by Setthivoine You (Chief Scientist) and Marta Calvo (Head of Operation), the company is based in Berkeley, California. In June 2018, HelicitySpace raised $150K in Pre-Seed funding. In October 2019, the US Department of Energy selected HelicitySpace for two funded projects in fusion energy development:
- Development of a high-current solid-state switch for magneto-inertial fusion, in collaboration with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
- Simulation of plectoneme formation, in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory