ABOUT FACTS NET Air/Space Craft

Have you ever wondered about the way we use technology? Lets look at a nuclear system for example. Most nuclear systems are used as a substitute for fire. Think about it, a multi million dollar system, put into place, that is only used to produce heat. This seems like such a waste to me. The whole purpose of a nuclear reactor is usually to produce heat which is used to create steam which then turns turbines. It serves the same function as coal or even wood burning fires except that it can go much longer without refueling. Of course you don't have to worry about the waste produced by coal or wood, so in that area they have an advantage over nuclear power which produces toxic radioactive waste that must be stored for hundreds of thousands of years and could eventually destroy the Earth. Let's take a look at reactors in space.

NASA has been discussing a concept that was talked over 30 years ago, it is the concept of using nuclear rockets instead of the chemical rockets already in use. Nuclear rockets have already been tested in Nevada. In this type of system the nuclear reactor heats hydrogen causing a more efficient propulsion system that will power a vehicle much faster to the planets. It certainly is not good enough to travel between stars but would improve local travel (in our solar system) considerable. But what happens if something goes wrong? One good thing is that the plans call for the nuclear vehicle to be launched in two separate pieces by chemical rockets and the reactor will not be activated at this point, but there will be nuclear fuel aboard that could come crashing back down to Earth, if the launch rocket malfunctioned.

NASA has developed solid core nuclear rockets (SNCR) at Los Alamos during the Rover Nerva program which dates back to the 1960s. They also experimented with gas core nuclear rockets (GCNR) Nuclear rockets were said to have never been implemented into the space program but could they have been used to for a secret space program that the general public was never allowed to know about? I have often talked about a space program that I suspect is being run by the U.S. Air force that may already have placed people on the Moon and Mars without our knowledge. Would this be so fantastic, after all we placed people on the moon many years ago and maybe we really didn't stop space exploration, maybe the military just kept going with new technology and just maybe this all started with a nuclear rocket.

Well so much for supposition. NASA's research into nuclear rockets started in 1956 and supposedly ended in 1971. They admit to creating nuclear rockets that were able to produce 250,000 pounds of thrust. To give you an idea of how much this is, it is about 30,000 pounds of thrust more than a 747 taking off with full power. It is not as much as the engines in the Saturn Rocket which gave out about 400,000 pounds of thrust. The thing is, it is a lot more efficient thrust generator. So what would the advantage of a nuclear rocket be over the current rockets in use now? A nuclear rocket could reach Mars in just a couple of months, significantly cutting the travel time. Another advantage would be that we could travel to Mars anytime and not have to wait for a window to launch. When the nuclear rocket program ended at NASA it was the consensus that nuclear rockets would have been too expensive at the time.

Today many people remember the nuclear space disasters that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Two Soviet nuclear satellites crashed on Earth. One fell into the Indian Ocean where it may have caused unknown radioactive damage but the other attracted more attention when it fell near the Great Slave lake in Canada. It spread its nuclear material over 50,000 square miles in the Canadian Arctic. These same people are letting it be known that they do not want to see nuclear material get launched into space. Who can blame them? Nuclear material is very dangerous and there is still no 100% guarantee that can be given that some tragedy will not occur. It is one thing to want to launch something and yet another to get it up there safely. Next you have the problem of either keeping it up or stopping it from crashing and contaminating some world out there in space. I can see it now, we finally make contact with some alien race in space and our first gift to them is a crashed nuclear rocket that spreads it's deadly cargo all over their planet.

A pulsed nuclear rocket is another type of nuclear rocket being studied. It would provide tiny nuclear blasts to power a space ship across the cosmos. This type of rocket pollutes as it flies along. Each blast produces radiation and radioactive waste. Another problem is that it is forbidden by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Project Orion called for a space ship that had a large, strong metal plate at the back with a hole in it. An atomic bomb would be pushed out through the hole and exploded a safe distance from the ship. Some of the energy would reach the plate and propel the ship forward. This process would be repeated over and over propelling the ship across space. Models of this ship were actually built and one successfully flew using conventional explosives. This sure doesn't seem like a friendly way to fly around the solar system or galaxy to me.

Will nuclear rockets be the next step in the evolution of space exploration? They might be, we sure seem to be heading in that direction again. One thing that we have to remember is that the longer people are in space flight the more exposed to radiation they are. Shorter flights mean lesser exposure risks. Until we master some sort of rapid propulsion and/or shielding, we are faced with the absurd choice of using nuclear power to protect us from radiation while it my lead to contamination of alien worlds or parts of space.