US military gives Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to develop nuclear spacecraft::The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory just awarded $33.7 million to Lockheed Martin to advance the development of space nuclear propulsion and power tech.
33 million? Sounds like this project is about to overrun 20ish billion before they " find out " that they can’t do it.
A working nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) engine was already built in the 60s under NASA’s NERVA project. It is one of the highest technological readiness level solutions we have to the dilemma of high specific impulse versus high thrust present in the current spsce engine technologies. Imo we need something like this to make manned interplanetary missions viable.
NTP was just a fachade, what NERV was actually researching was the human instrumentality project, I saw it in a robots documental
So after $40M more and a half decade of delays past due, we might have LM produce something with record efficiency.
we might have LM produce something with record efficiency.
Narrator: They didn’t
Complete dead-end technologically and politically, so this is basically just a gift to Lockheed. Lobbyist deserves a promotion!
Why do you think so?
JETSON aims to launch a fission reactor that will be started up once in space. The reactor will generate heat, which is then transferred to Stirling power converters to produce electricity. This can then be used to power spacecraft payloads or electric thrusters for propulsion.
I can see launching nuclear payloads being a tough sell politically but the technological principles are sound.
It’s also worth noting that past mars solar panels start to be functionally useless, so we use…nuclear powered spacecraft… to generate electricity when needed and have done for half a century. It’s not like nuclear stuff in space is a new idea
It’s not like nuclear stuff in space is a new idea
We even detonated atomic bombs in space
Humanity shouldn’t spread through the galaxy. We’ve already raped one planet into an extinction event.
