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Nuclear Fission Rockets

Nuclear rockets have, in one way or another, been studied for the past fifty years. Some of the earliest ideas for nuclear rockets came from the nuclear physicists struggling to build the bomb at Los Alamos. These desgins evolved into what are called solid core nuclear rockets. Solid core nuclear rockets work by taking liquid hydrogen and pumping it to the reactor through a jacket surrounding the rocket engine. This pumping process helps cool the rocket, and it also preheats the liquid hydrogen. Hundreds of narrow channels pass through the nuclear reactor. As the liquid hydrogen flows through these channels, heat from the reactor changes the fuel into rapidly expanding gas. The gas flows through the exhaust nozzle at speeds up to 35,400 kilometers per hour. A diagram of a solid core rocket. Several tests were carried out during the 1960s with nuclear rockets. The most well known of these are the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) tests. NERVA involved the Los Alamos laboratory, Westinghouse, Aerojet, and other industrial partners. Together, they were able to build and test a solid core rocket with a thrust of 250,000 pounds, and a specific impulse (Isp) of 850 seconds, nearly twice the best Isp of chemical rockets (specific impulse is a "miles per gallon" for rockets). Unfortunately, the public's fear of anything nuclear led to the cancellation of NERVA in 1971. The field of nuclear rocketry would lie nearly dormant for the next 10 years.

In 1982 there was an upsurge of support for nuclear rockets. The old NERVA designs were dusted off just in time for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars"). This time though, a new design emerged: the gas core nuclear rocket. Gas core rockets use a gaseous nuclear fuel instead of the solid graphite core used in NERVA. A gaseous fuel could attain tempertures of several tens of thousands of degrees which would provide an Isp of 3000 to 5000 seconds. A gas core engine would allow manned missions to Mars to be accomplished in half the time that is being considered now. Originally, nuclear rockets were going to move and power large SDI space-based lasers. When it was decided that conventional means would work just as well, nuclear rockets were largely dropped from SDI. Only the small Timberwolf Project continued looking into their uses.

Today, research into nuclear rockets proceeds at a slow but steady pace. Most of the work is done at Los Alamos, where nuclear rockets originated. Most of the problems that the scientists are trying to solve now are how to build a nozzle and combustion chamber that can withstand the high tmeperatures of a gas core rocket, and how to contain the uranium plasma that forms. If viable nuclear rockets are ever developed, they would have the possibility of opening the solar system to manned space flight. A trip to Mars would easily be within our grasp. We will have to wait and see.