Sunday Things - nuclear propulsion edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday August 19 2012
While reading up on the oft-mentioned MSL Curiosity and its nuclear-fuelled RTG power supply, I got distracted by some altogether less safe nuclear options starting with the heady days of the Cold War...
NERVA - or Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application - a programme to develop a nuclear thermal rocket engine, later deemed suitable for a putative manned mission to Mars, and then cancelled in order to avoid the cost of that manned mission to Mars. The test rockets looked terrifying - and of course the Soviets didn't want to be left behind...
Project Orion - the mother (and father, and three-headed irradiated child) of potential nuclear rocketry, this would have worked by dropping small nuclear bombs behind the spacecraft, exploding them and riding the resulting shockwave on a gigantic, spring-loaded plate. While it would have succeeded in launching frankly implausible masses into orbit and beyond, it would also have produced plenty of radioactive fallout - though not as much as the nuclear war they were expecting...
Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion - prior to the invention of the rapid-delivery ICBM, keeping one's nuclear bombs on near-endlessly-flying nuclear bombers seemed like an eminently sensible thing to do. Perhaps fortunately for everyone involved, a test flight with an operational but otherwise unconnected nuclear reactor showed protecting the crew from irradiation was too impractical to warrant further development.
Project Prometheus - moving close to the present day, instead of an interstellar mission to disregard sensible quarantine procedures, a bid to combine a nuclear reactor with ion thrusters to send giant, unmanned space probes to the outer solar system. Cancelled, due to budgetary issues. Of course. We did get the solar-powered Juno, currently en route to Jupiter!
Bonus Martian Humour corner:
- N165 - a happy little basaltic Mars rock, with a new robot friend.
- We're Nasa and We Know It - now awaiting response from SpaceX.
Article comments (now closed)
2. Orion!
Posted by Cargo Cult at 10:58AM, Wednesday August 22 2012
Let us thank YouTube, home of old science documentaries:
"To Mars By A-Bomb - The Secret History of Project Orion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4k_YZAXSEI
Cheers!
Article is now closed for commenting.
1. Orion
Posted by inomine at 2:21AM, Monday August 20 2012
The BBC made a great documentary about project Orion, called "To Mars by A-Bomb". It contains footage of a proof of concept test they did with a rocket powered by conventional explosives. Even that looked suitably mental.