![]() Which means less resources consumed by the astronauts, and a lower radiation load.Īnd there’s another big benefit. Remember the 8 months I mentioned for a chemical rocket? A nuclear thermal rocket could cut the transit time in half, maybe even 100 day trips to Mars. Very very high velocity, giving the rocket two to three times the propulsion efficiency of a chemical rocket. This heats up a hydrogen to almost 2,500 C which is then expelled out the back of the rocket at high velocity. A marble-sized ball of Uranium fuel undergoes the process of fission, releasing a tremendous amount of heat. Thanks to good old Newton’s third law, you know, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, the rocket receives a thrust in the opposite direction from the expelled gases.Ī nuclear rocket works in a similar way. While a chemical rocket works by igniting some kind of flammable chemical and then forcing the exhaust gases out a nozzle. Artist’s concept of a Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket in Low Earth Orbit. But they did perform some successful tests of nuclear thermal propulsion and demonstrated that it does work. This was pioneered by Werner von Braun, who hoped that human missions would be flying to Mars in the 1980s, on the wings of nuclear rockets. In 1961, NASA and the Atomic Energy Commision worked together on the idea of nuclear thermal propulsion, or NTP. They definitely speed up the journey, but they’re not without their own risks, which is why you haven’t seen them.
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