AFAIK, the only nuclear rocket that makes sense is landing a reactor on an icy comet and using it to shoot super heated steam wherever you want thrust.
#seveneves
#seveneves
Nukes can totally function as the energy for rocket’s impulse. Very small and very directed nukes. The directed explosion plasma wave hits a pusher plate, where very specific plasma physics play out - the plate is not vaporized but merely receives an impulse - and then there are dampers to smoothen the blow.
Half of the interviewed experts were positive it would work and half were skeptical.
So, it’s sort of sad they had to wrap it up due to nuclear test ban before actually being able to run actual tests.
The best part? The bigger it is, the better. We could totally have gigantic nuclear space cruisers that go to Jupiter in like a week (I exaggerate because I forget the exact orbits but with ISP from nukes that bastard goes fast)
“A moderate-sized nuclear device was estimated, at the time, to produce about 5 or 10 billion horsepower.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...
Son. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dyson_(science_historia...
Relatives Sir George Dyson (grandfather) Freeman Dyson (father) Verena Huber-Dyson (mother)[1] Esther Dyson (sister)
I don't think this is the general consensus. It is seen as one of the only ways to get humans out of the solar system, but other nuclear rockets[1], and even chemical options[2], could get humans to eg the Jovian moons[3] with TRL's much higher than Project Orion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_spaceflight#Cyc...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Jupiter#Human_e...
A unique property of nuclear pulse propulsion is that the engineering gets easier the more massive the spacecraft. That leaves lots of room for radiation shielding and consumables, and makes it the only halfway practical choice for multi-year missions into the outer solar system.
I disagree, one of the types I referenced is cyclers, which are specifically good for the same kind of reason. NERVA is another alternative that becomes similarly easier as you scale it up. All three types would need in-space assembly, so no big issues with any of them that way.
Don't get me wrong, Orion is cool (and the only way to conceivably run an interstellar mission with known technology/physics), but it isn't necessary (or even desirable imo) for interplanetary missions, at least as far as saturn anyway.
1. Build the base structure of cycler in earth orbit, then transfer it into the orbit you want (i.e. earth-jupiter intersecting). This would be structure, engines, shielding. This might require a couple dozen nuclear thermal boosters, or maybe it has to be phased over two launch periods and assembled in the cycling orbit
2. Assemble in earth orbit everything you want for a manned mission (food, water, landing craft, astronauts)
3. Rendezvouz that material with the cycler on its next orbit (I don't know the timing for earth-jupiter - maybe 12 years after step 1). This is a comparatively small effort, as the shielding and habitable space was already taken care of with step 1
4. live your life for the year or whatever the transfer is
5. Take your landing craft from the cycler to Europa surface
Different crews can hop on the original cycler by repeating steps 2 to 5. Conceptually you would want multiple of these cyclers coming and going, so that a crew can arrive on Europa on cycler A and return on Cycler G, only spending 5 years on Europa instead of 12. Their advantage is that the big heavy mass (sheilding) only has to be launched once, and can be used repeatedly, indefinitely.
However, now that I think about it, cyclers would only need to use the NPP engines (bombs) to get into their cycling orbits, so you might be able to get away with accelerating them while unmanned. You could design such a craft with much less radiation shielding, but still include enough to prevent cosmic rays from killing (or more accurately, increasing their cancer risk) the passengers giving such a craft a significantly larger fraction of usable mass for other purposes. Initially accelerating a Mars cycler with unmanned landers with supplies and materials for an initial colony with humans to follow could be an interesting design.
All of this is more expensive than anyone is willing to pay for, even if there was an appetite for the nuclear proliferation risk of making and then putting a thousand compact bombs on a spacecraft. Not even mentioning the risk of the bomb carrier rockets exploding and causing a 100x Broken Arrow situation.
It is for this reason that I must urge the government to immediately fund the writing of several novels about how this can go wrong and right for me to read.
Not really, each one would be 6 inches in diameter and weight over 300lbs.
RIP New Caird