Will nuclear-powered spaceships take us to the stars? - BBC News

[realizm]

The 1950s-era Orion project would have propelled a rocket using enormous nuclear explosions (Adrian Mann)

 

In the 1950s, rocket scientists dreamed of atomic-powered spaceships. Now these far-fetched designs might help a new generation explore the cosmos.

 

Project Orion has to be the most audacious, dangerous and downright absurd space programme ever funded by the US taxpayer. This 1950s design involved exploding nuclear bombs behind a spacecraft the size of the Empire State Building to propel it through space. The Orion’s engine would generate enormous amounts of energy – and with it lethal doses of radiation.

 

Plans suggested the spacecraft could take off from Earth and travel to Mars and back in just three months. The quickest flight using conventional rockets and the right planetary alignment is 18 months.

 

There were obvious challenges – from irradiating the crew and the launch site, to the disruption caused by the electromagnetic pulse, plus the dangers of a catastrophic nuclear accident taking out a sizable portion of the US. But the plan was, nevertheless, given serious consideration. Project Orion was conceived when atmospheric nuclear tests were commonplace and the power of the atom promised us all a bright new tomorrow. Or oblivion. Life was simpler then.

 

In the early 1960s, common sense prevailed and the project was abandoned, but the idea of nuclear-powered spaceships has never gone away. In fact there are several in the cold depths of space right now.

 

Nasa's Nerva project also investigated the use of nuclear engines in space (Adrian Mann)

 

The Voyager space probes, currently heading beyond the bounds of the Solar System, and the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn are fitted with nuclear power plants. These Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) rely on the natural decay of plutonium to generate heat, which is then converted into electricity.

 

With no moving parts, RTGs are not nuclear reactors and can only generate a few hundred watts of power (the equivalent of a bright lightbulb). But as ambitions for missions deeper into our solar system grow, much larger spaceships propelled by more powerful nuclear generators are back on the agenda.

 

“Orion was a visionary project,” says Kelvin Long, physicist, engineer and head of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies. “People who are excited about this stuff don’t live in the present, we live in the future.”

 

Long’s immediate future involves helping to design a starship – a robotic craft that could travel at high speed beyond our Solar System to other nearby stars. A starship travelling at thousands of kilometres per second could reach Mars in weeks, the outer solar system in months and other star systems in years. Long is not alone. There are several other programmes underway, including the 100 Year Starship project backed by the US military research agency, Darpa.

 

To achieve this goal, the ships will need much more powerful propulsion systems than conventional chemical rockets or solar-powered probes. “It’s all about generating enormous amounts of energy,” says Long. “You can get much more efficient power generation from nuclear systems, such as fission or fusion.”

 

 

Fission involves splitting atomic nuclei in a controlled chain reaction to produce energy. Conventional nuclear power stations and the generating plants on nuclear submarines and ships use the technique to make electricity. It is a well established, but not incident-free, science. In the fusion process, on the other hand, the nuclei of atoms are forced together to release energy. It is what powers the Sun, and the hydrogen bomb.

 

“Fusion produces much more energy, in terms of bang for your buck, compared to fission-based systems,” says Long, explaining why his group’s starship designers favour fusion propulsion. “We know it’s a very efficient process. If you can do it you can produce a power generation system which will move you outside the Solar System and you don’t have to come back for more rocket fuel.”

 

Power challenge

 

However, as anyone who has followed the field knows, despite the multi-billion-dollar global effort that has gone into fusion research over the past half century, no one has yet built a fusion reactor that produces more energy then you put in. There is an in-joke among fusion engineers (and their journalist followers) that a viable fusion power plant is always 30 years away.

 

Undeterred, various concepts for fusion engines have been proposed. One, funded by Nasa, involves a contained atomic reaction that generates a focused beam of charged particles to push the starship along. Apart from the enormous thrust such a system could generate – well in excess of conventional rockets – as you travel around the cosmos you could tap into a ready supply of suitable fuel, such as helium 3.

 

“There’s helium 3 in the gas giants like Jupiter, absolutely loads of it,” says Long. “You could mine it with huge balloons that you drop into the atmosphere, separate out the helium, load it into your starship and away you go.” It seems that no problem is too big for those who live in the future.

 

 

Read more: Source

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Lxx2VAYi8

[peacemak3r]

I figure, we have nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines, I'm sure a nuclear powered space ship is possible.

 

What we really need, is a break-through with warp technology.

[realizm]

Physicists are considering technology that makes use of pulse engines or engines that produces energy from antimatter which theoretically in physics is possible: On paper that is. Also they are debating upon the use of accessing black holes to tear the fabric of time to travel in light years. Hence warp technology.

 

The incident that killed the Orion project with its original aim of sending crews to the moons of Saturn was the Cuban Missile Crisis between the US and Russia. As a result the 1963 ban on nuclear weapons testing was signed by both world leaders. Therefore the Orion project could not continue.

 

Back then the project was top secret as the US did not want their nuclear weapons technology in the hands of the Soviets (The KGB managed to find infiltrators that broke into the DoD anyway right under the noses of the CIA to develop the Tsar Bomb, the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated in history). But inb recent years the documents has been declassified. So now everyone is talking about the once active Orion project. Really interesting concept and history behind its development. 

 

Another reason it didnt progress is because of the lack of light composite materials that are super strong, it just didn't exist back then for the pusher plates that would contain the controlled nuclear explosions to propel the ship. Now we have super strong carbon nanotubes which are also used in automobile manufacturing with cars, and are also used in aircraft such as the USAF F-22 Raptor and the Russian PAK T-50 stealth fighter.

 

So as long as the world has the political will to finance such a project to resume, or to start a similar one we could just be going places with such technology, even visiting distant solar systems, as with nuclear fission propulsion, it can put a ship in speeds of light years, theoretically.

[Tokkemon]

Deep Impact.

[QM1to6Ave]

Those nuclear powered submarines seem to have stood the rigors of underwater travel pretty well overall, and underwater is the closest test environment we have to space. 

[Roadcruiser1]

It's been proven that nuclear propulsion will propel a rocket roughly around 10% the speed of light. If we can add antimatter technology that rocket will fly 80% the speed of light, but in reality we need to develop warp drive technology which will allow us to make rockets faster than the speed of light. However we need to improve our current technologies to get up there.....

[realizm]

It's been proven that nuclear propulsion will propel a rocket roughly around 10% the speed of light. If we can add antimatter technology that rocket will fly 80% the speed of light, but in reality we need to develop warp drive technology which will allow us to make rockets faster than the speed of light. However we need to improve our current technologies to get up there.....

Exactly. Physicist Freeman Dyson analyzed the potential of Orion missions to reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the Sun. He calculated that such a ship can travel up to 8% - 10% the speed of light, which is pretty damn fast. (1 kilometer = .625 miles, 10,000 x .625 = 6250 miles per second.) Still though even at blinding speed like this it would take 133 years. It will need one nuclear explosion every three seconds off the pusher plate to accelerate to such a speed.

 

Unfortunately the political will is not there as the price tag for such a gargantuan project will cost about a cool $3.67 trillion dollars if we are going to a whole new star system altogether, lol.

 

With that technology however, as originally proposed under the Orion project a ship can make it to Saturn at that same speed in not even three months, which is incredible! Compare that with Voyager 2 which took 4 years and the Cassini spacecraft that took 6 years and nine months or the New Horizons spacecraft which two years and four months to get to that planet. A nuclear powered spaceship to Saturn in only three months?! That would be a good gauge at how fast the nuclear propulsion spaceship will be traveling.