NASA and DARPA team up to go nuclear in hopes of putting boots on Mars
- Reference: 1674649513
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/01/25/nasa_darpa_nuclear_engine/
- Source link:
The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) is expected to prove nuclear thermal propulsion by 2027. DARPA has been working on an experimental spacecraft design for the project since 2021.
NASA now joins to tackle the engine's technical development while DARPA will continue leading the overall program, inclusive of integrating the systems, procurement, schedules, security, and assembly of the engine and spacecraft.
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Both agencies will collaborate on assembly of the engine.
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"With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars," [4]said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
DARPA director Stefanie Tompkins said before Mars, DRACO will be essential for transporting material to the Moon.
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The shortened travel time is expected to reduce the potential for adverse incidents and amount of supplies that need to be brought along, particularly for manned missions. This leaves room for more scientific payload.
The bonus is that the high temperatures generated by the fission reactor can be transferred to a liquid propellant expanded and exhausted through a nozzle to propel the spacecraft. Such nuclear propulsion systems are known to be three times more efficient than conventional chemical ones.
[6]Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter
[7]NASA boss says US may lose latest space race with China
[8]Everyone's going to Mars: Rocket Lab joins the Red Planet Fan Club
[9]Space dust reveals Earth-killer asteroids would be tough to destroy
Nuclear thermal rocket engine tests were last conducted by US agencies over half a century ago under NASA's Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Project Rover, a project that predates the existence of NASA. Both were deemed a success, but never flew into space.
Details of the demonstration mission were not provided, although NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said at the [10]AIAA SciTech Forum on Tuesday that the spaceraft would orbit at an altitude between 700 and 2,000 kilometers to allow sufficient radioactive decay before rentering Earth atmosphere.
NASA is expected to land humans on Mars sometime in the next decade or the one after. Progress and goals to get there are in place with NASA's [11]Moon to Mars objectives, but the actual date of when feet will land on the red surface is [12]ever-evolving.
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Human return to the Moon is much more within reach. Artemis 2, the first scheduled crewed mission of NASA's Orion spacecraft, is slated to take four astronauts on a lunar flyby in 2024. Artemis 3 has astronauts land on the surface.
A nuclear thermal rocket engine could be just what NASA needs to make a crewed Mars mission as feasible as a Moon mission while increasing the frequency of those lunar trips.
"Recent aerospace materials and engineering advancements are enabling a new era for space nuclear technology, and this flight demonstration will be a major achievement toward establishing a space transportation capability for an Earth-Moon economy," said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. ®
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[4] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-darpa-will-test-nuclear-engine-for-future-mars-missions
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/martian_blood_brick_plan/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/nasa_nelson_moon/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/23/rocket_lab_mars/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/25/space_dust_asteroid/
[10] https://www.aiaa.org/SciTech/program/scitech-session/fireside-chat-on-a-new-collaboration-to-advance-propulsion-technologies
[11] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-stakeholder-collaborations-help-inform-moon-to-mars-planning
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/27/moon_2028/
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[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Project Orion
I couldn't help but think the same thing. Lift-off would be awesome to see (dark goggles please) but not sure I'd be happy with the environmental impact.
Re: Project Orion
Dyson investigated the use of atomic explosions for rocket propulsion, as recounted in his autobiography 'Disturbing the Universe'. I don't think he was considering a nuclear thermal engine as described in the article. The team realised that the increasing level of radioactivity in the atmosphere due to airborne nuclear bomb testing made their idea unacceptable. (The experiments with chemical explosives were successful.)
I assume that there would be a pure chemical launch vehicle to Earth orbit, and the thermal nuclear engine would take over afterwards for the actual trip to Mars.
Boots scattered on Mars, Venus, various asteroids.
So instead of being cooked like a pie in a microwave over a 6 month period, the Marsfarers can now be cooked instantly. We live in an age of instant gratification.
What worries me is that the NASA put out a statement without mentioning how it will help them search for extraterrestrial life on other planets. Someone needs to be sacked (or microwaved) for not reminding the world how the NASA is still relevant, even in this age, out there looking for life and keeping busy.
(It's intrigued me for a while how the NASA want to use JWST to look for signs of life on a planet 40 LY away when they can't even conclusively determine if it exists on Mars, which is here within grabbing distance).
Re: Boots scattered on Mars, Venus, various asteroids.
JWST can possibly detect life if there is lots of it to the point it has modified the atmosphere to show chemical signatures that are rare for inorganic processes.
Mars is known to have very little signs of life, but we also know from extreme locations on Earth that life can survive and those have not yet been ruled out.
Make reality more like Kerbal Space Program. Brilliant.
Boots on Mars.
Not Superdrug then?
Re: Boots on Mars.
That deserves more than the one upvote I can give :D
Where is the handbrake?
The only way it can shorten the travel time is by going faster but how do you slow it down when it gets there?
Re: Where is the handbrake?
It's a game of two halves - however quickly it's played.
Re: Where is the handbrake?
At the halfway point, you turn the rocket around 180 degrees and the propellant will slow the rocket down. It ain't rocket science.
Re: Where is the handbrake?
I'm sorry you got a downvote. What is obvious to science (or sci-fi) fans is not necessarily obvious to the general public, and one should not be penalized for asking a honest question.
The answer, simplifying just a bit, is: at some point before you get there, you rotate the vehicle 180° and fire the main engine again.
Re: Where is the handbrake?
and if Musk or Bezos are involved then you can be sure it would have been fired just after leaving Earth orbit for doing nothing for a whole minute!
So what fuel will be used ?
TL;DR: Argon ? Sulfur hexafluoride ? Or something else ??
If you are going to super heat some gas that is stored as a liquid, what would work best (I'm guessing that you do not want to deal with a solid, because the second phase change would waste far too much energy).
I'm guessing that it needs to be a gas with a low molar heat capacity, somewhere about ~21 J/(mol·K) or lower, which would take Oxygen, Nitrogen and Hydrogen off the table at ~28 to 30 J/(mol·K). It would need to not be corrosive (so a noble gas would fit the bill well). Next question would be which would be better a higher or a lower temperature boiling point, I'm going to guess that higher is better that you need to use less energy to raise it's temperature before it leaves the craft forever. That would make the perfect gases Xenon (boiling point 165.051 K; −108.099 °C; −162.578 °F) Molar heat capacity 21.01 J/(mol·K) or Krypton (boiling point 119.93 K; −153.415 °C; −244.147 °F) Molar heat capacity 20.95 J/(mol·K). But if you needed a few hundred tons of the stuff something that is about 0.9340% of earths atmosphere might work out much much much much much cheaper to source - i.e. Argon (boiling point 87.302 K ; −185.848 °C; −302.526 °F) Molar heat capacity 20.85 J/(mol·K) ? Krypton is about ~0.000114% and Xenon is about 0.0000087% of earths atmosphere and insanely expensive to use by the ton.
Sulfur hexafluoride would probably be better than perfect (boiling point 222.3 K; −50.8°C; −59.4 °F) but for it's ridiculously high molar heat capacity of 97 J/(mol·K).
Re: So what fuel will be used ?
Fuel or propellant?
Anyway, the article was short on details but the news bit at [1]DARPA emits this:
Nuclear thermal rockets have been built before, so DRACO has a head start. About 50 years ago, the technology was tested on the ground. DRACO is now leveraging lessons learned from past NTR reactor technology, but instead of using highly-enriched uranium, DRACO is using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel to have fewer logistical hurdles on its ambitious timeline. As an added safety precaution, DARPA plans to engineer the system so that the DRACO engine’s fission reaction will turn on only once it reaches space.
Fission, the same process used for nuclear power, is the splitting of atoms. It creates high levels of heat that can turn rocket propellant such as hydrogen from a liquid to a gas phase. In the NTR, that gaseous propellant is accelerated out a converging/diverging nozzle in the exact same way as a conventional chemical rocket engine. The high performance of an NTR is enabled by the reactor passing its heat along to its rocket propellant. DRACO’s proposed solid core NTR temperatures could reach almost 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring use of advanced materials.
[1] https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2023-01-24
"The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) is expected to prove nuclear thermal propulsion by 2027"
If they had continued with the 1960s NERVA nuclear rocket engine then there would have been no need to reinvent it today. The was a great deal of optimism in the 1960s about what could be accomplished in space including project ideas like Mustard to get into Earth orbit (3 shuttles attached to each other at launch) and Project Deimos to get to Mars.
There is a very good account of those days in Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland's Frontiers of Space book. While that book is no longer in print, copies can still be found online.
Mars?
While the idea of nuclear engines are great, I think we must figure out on how to survive on the moon, with minimal help first. Mars is a bit too far away for any reasonable help to arrive in time.
You want boots on Mars, fine, but with people wearing them, not so fine. So far we have not had a long term isolated, working habitat right here on the ground on this planet. The ISS is regularly supplied, and with personal changes, so it doesn't count.
Project Orion
Come on you cowards do it properly and make Freeman Dyson proud!