Development of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket in the Current Environment for Application to Lunar, Mars and Deep Space Missions
- Paper number
IAC-08.C4.7.-C3.5.4
- Author
Dr. Steven Howe, USRA, United States
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Nuclear Thermal Rockets (NTR) offer the potential for high-thrust and high specific-impulse (Isp) space propulsion. Although the NTR was tested thoroughly in the 1960s in the Rover/NERVA programs, many question whether or not the NTR can be developed and tested in the current world. During a twelve week period in the summer of 2006, The Center for Space Nuclear Research (CSNR) hosted thirteen university students as part of the CSNR Summer Fellowship program. Part of the program focused on assessing the financial benefit of using a NTR to support a Lunar Outpost. The results show that significant reduction in Initial Mass in Low Earth Orbit (IMLEO) can result from the use of the NTR. Alternatively, substantially more mass can be put onto the Lunar surface for a given IMLEO if the NTR is used. Similarly, past studies have shown that the NTR offers the options of faster trips to Mars or carrying larger payloads. The NTR can also be used to reduce the time-to-first-science for deep space missions. Development of a NTR in the current socio-political environment may depend on three major issues: 1) technical performance – does use of the NTR outperform the competition sufficiently to warrant development costs, 2) proliferation – use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the NTR offers potential problems on a launch abort, and 3) socio-political acceptance- the NTR must be shown to be safe and not inject radioactivity into the biosphere. Recent results from studies performed at the CSNR indicate that several improvements to the Rover/NERVA designs are now possible that will enable a NTR to conform to these issues.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)