The Real Reason NASA Is Developing A Nuclear Rocket Engine!

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What kills me is that we had this technology for more than half a century.

9:20 The nuclei are bombarded by "Neutrons", not "Electrons". It is shown correctly in the video but narrated incorrectly.

Narrator- "Liquid Rocket Engines are fairly simple in their design" Me, and other fellow students who are studying propulsion- "Uh hold up... When did that happen?!"

Growing up in the 60's and watching the "space race" was so exciting. We got to the moon....and then nothing. I for one am happy to see the world get excited about going into space...

How realistic would it be for Starship to get into orbit, and then have a nuclear frame waiting to take it to Mars? Figuring Nuclear being the best Space transport.

So, it's basically the NERVA project from the 60's, shocked it took this long to start working on it again.

It was written correctly, but I heard it twice. "Uranium atoms bombarded with free electrons splitting into two parts and releasing energy". Uranium atoms being bombarded by neutrons... Oops.

This is the type of pure space research that NASA should be focused on. Then allow private companies to refine/optimize/commoditize it. Little to nothing of what SpaceX is doing is revolutionary from the aspect of rocket science fundamentals. From the aspect of manufacturing, absolutely.

I would like to see Starship go to orbit under normal propulsion, then settle into a "framework", consisting of the nuclear engine(s), and fuel tanks. Once locked in, this setup could take them to Mars, or beyond, and still give them normal engines for landing, while saving fuel. Such a setup could be refueled from a tanker-style Starship, for repeated use. Use of a combined-cycle nuclear thermal engine, with the exhaust being hyper-accelerated through a Hall Effect thruster, might give the performance needed for long voyages, in a reasonable amount of time...

I applaud NASA and DARPA for this initiative. I remember that Werner Von Braun had a launch date to send humans to Mars in 1982 via nuclear propulsion

I feel positive about their time line. Surely the consept have been proven in the 60's so it will be a matter of implementing it to a test flight article.

He said "crewed missions to Mars" I heard "crude missions to Mars"

Using hydrogen has a couple of downsides, which is why it is usually not used in current rockets. 1 it has to be stored colder, has a lower density thus needs more space, it is highly reactive and corrodes metal containers and is also highly flammable.

The thing to consider on the timeline is that they aren't developing completely new technologies. They're taking existing ones and integrating them in a new way. As an integration project a five year timeline seems far more reasonable than, say, developing an entirely new engine using unproven theory. If anything delays this project it won't be the science. It may be the engineering (see the delays in the Blue Origin BE4 or Boeing Starliner) but it's most likely to be political and regulatory. With DARPA involved that will smooth a lot of political problems though which may well be why they've gotten involved.

There's a few points that are incorrect in the video FYI. Nuclear fission doesn't involve electrons, uranium atoms are bombarded with neutrons and when fission occurs more free neutrons are released which in turn split more atoms. Another is, Blue Origin don't use methane in their upper stage engines on New Glenn. The BE-4 is CH4/LOx but the BE-3U is LH2/LOx.

Since a working nuclear engine has existed since the 60s, it will be interesting to see how they solve the fuel supply issue. The video i seen on the subject indicated the fuel volume required was quite large and we still have no infrastructure in orbit to supply such.

The ability to design and test a nuclear engine was Preformed in the late 60's and early 70's, so hopefully they still have the technology. Basically the only thing DARPA needs to do is update the existing design and manufacture it for a interplanetary vessel. A nuclear engine could do two things. First it could get us to Mars in about 30 days and Jupiter in a few months. This should open up exploration to objects past the Moon like Starship (by Spacex) will hopefully do to getting large payloads into orbit. Secondly, the nuclear engine will provide enough thrust to maintain a 1g acceleration to provide artificial gravity. It is looking like we just might have a good chance of having a bright future in space! And I believe that this push for development is a direct result of China trying to do the same. Because the USSR was the main reason we landed on the Moon. Now with China trying to get the ability to out perform the USA, as a result we in the United States have taken the challenge and are in competition once again.

"When science is on the march, nothing can stand in its way!"

Awesome. I love this tech, surprised you didn't mention that we built one of these in the 60s to test, though never flew it and since then have been able to make them much lighter and safer. Also this is just the first step of this tech tree, the gas core NTRs can go about 5 times faster than these solid core ones.