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atomic-fuel-1

Engineers accept developed some truly impressive rockets over the decades, including the Saturn V that sent men to the moon. However, they've all been chemical rockets, which demand an enormous amount of fuel just to slip the bonds of gravity and reach orbit. Equally NASA sets its sights on more distant goals like Mars, in that location'southward renewed interest in a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system. NASA has partnered with BWXT Nuclear Energy to develop one.

NASA began researching diminutive rocket engines in the early 1950s, designing the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Awarding (NERVA). The concept offered a number of intriguing improvements over chemical rockets. It used a nuclear reactor to heat liquid hydrogen to a high temperature, causing it to aggrandize out of the nozzle to produce thrust. It was twice every bit efficient as the best rocket engines of the solar day, and offered much higher overall speeds. A flight that would accept eight-9 months with a chemical engine might merely have 3-4 with the NERVA. However, the engine operated at temperatures nearing 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (ii,700 degrees Celsius) and relied upon highly enriched uranium to power the reactor. The project was scrapped in the early 1970s.

An atomic rocket has the potential to move more mass a much greater distance than traditional chemical propulsion. SpaceX volition have its Falcon Heavy rocket in service within a year or 2, making information technology the well-nigh powerful launch platform since the retirement of NASA's Saturn V. But even the Falcon Heavy will just be able to lift 37,000 pounds (16,800 kg) to Mars. A completely empty Dragon 2 capsule weighs in at 14,000 pounds, leaving niggling room for all the necessities a human expedition would need. Some have proposed sending unmanned missions ahead of humans to deliver supplies, but that pushes back launch timelines and adds to the toll.

NASA's revival of the NTP idea comes at a time when nuclear engineering science is much less "blunt" than it one time was. The $eighteen.eight million contract awarded to BWXT will allow the company to explore the use of Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) to power a reactor. LEU contains much less fissile uranium 235 than highly enriched fuels, so it'south safer to work with and can't be used to create nuclear weapons.

BWXT plans to merge the LEU with pure tungsten to create a new ceramic-metallic material known equally a cermet (see epitome at top). This would stabilize the fuel and make it safer at the incredibly high temperatures at which such an engine would operate.

NASA will decide adjacent week if the initial NTP proposal from BWXT is potent enough to keep. If information technology gets the get-ahead, the company will begin producing the cermet material over the next year, with tests of the engine to follow at NASA'southward Marshall Space Flight Heart in Huntsville, Alabama.