Nuclear Powered Space Flight #4
The future is nuclear!
Hello everyone, This Part 4 of our 4 part series on Nuclear Thermal Propulsion: Hope you enjoy the finale!
Nuclear Thermal Propulsion sounds pretty high-tech, and rather cutting edge, but while you may find it a rather complicated piece of technology, the concept is older than most of us: The idea was first published publicly in 1947, and in 1955, Los Alamos — the same Los Alamos that worked on the bomb — work first began to make this dream into reality: with multiple successes! The first successful test happened in 1959 with the KIWI-A which produced 5000 pounds of thrust. This number, with the help of funding during JFK’s time, rose to 250,000 pounds of thrust with the mighty Pheobus 2A.
Mind you we are only in 1967, and for the past decade there had never been any technical failures nor financial setbacks in the program. Of course, with such progress the Nixon administration made the next logical move: cutting funding to the program completely. And with that, the program that made missions to Mars possible was killed.
It may be comforting to know that the Soviet Union was a little more pragmatic in this regard, working on NTP till its fall in the 90s. As it stands, the Russian RD-0410 is the sole, vestigial remnant of the checked Soviet NTP program. It stood at an impressive 910 seconds of specific impulse.
Food for thought here: The future of spaceflight was invented and successfully tested 70 years ago, and was killed by poor governance.
Let us no longer dwell on the past As interest grows once more in the exploration, and possibly colonization, of the Moon as Mars, the technology is making a comeback.
As the stars would have it, The torch bearers for modern NTP are the Americans. Perhapes the folks in Los Alamos can rest easy knowing their work was not in vain (Sorry, didnt mean to get emotional). In January of 2023, NASA and DARPA announced an agreement to “develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion as soon as 2027”. The awesomely named Program DRACO will feature prominent companies like Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies. All in all, this is humanity’s best bet for NTP.
Other nations, however, have some skin in the game. The Russians, in the spirit of their Cold War rivalry, are working on their “Zeus” nuclear space tug while the Indians, Chinese, and Europeans are in pursuit, intergrating nuclear technologies in their space program. Just recently, India used a Radio-Thermo-Generator (RTG) to generate power for their Chaandrayan-3 mission.
With a concerted effort to revitalize the space sector, we can expect to see an increase in nuclear’s role for space-based applications. Indeed, Nuclear Thermal Propulsion — as vast as it seems — is only a card in the nuclear deck when it comes to redefining space exploration.
Let us look to the future with determination, and reach for the stars with Nuclear Propulsion!
This brings the conclusion of the 4 part series on Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. I will write 1 more Stellar Snippet before moving to a new topic.
