NERVA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA was way more practical. They actually built these things and experimentally confirmed specific impulse, they just never launched them.
It's so sad to listen to the documentaries and hear how NERVA "is on track to propel mankind to mars by the late 1970s or early 1980s." Ah well. At least we're starting to care about space again!
Even more promising was the nuclear lightbulb reactor [1], which was developed by United Aircraft Corporation (now UTC) for NASA under the Mars program in the 70s. They got just short of testing the engine with nuclear fuel and all of the remaining obstacles were with material science and computation which would have been very solvable given the tech developed independently in the 90s. The design could also have changed the trajectory of the entire nuclear power industry because it uses compressed uranium hexafluoride plasma to reach criticality so it has the benefit of using tens of kilograms of fuel instead of tens of thousands and it's an actively maintained magnetohydrodynamic system so if anything breaks or power is lost, the reactor slows down and fission stops. Large centrifuges are needed to recycle fuel from the buffer gas (when it's used as a terrestrial power plant instead of a rocket engine) so this reactor can also be self-breeding and recycle nuclear waste.
Many of the papers generated by UTC on this project were readily available a decade ago, though it seems many were reclassified since then.
That reaches temperatures of 25,000C. AFAICT we don't have any materials that can withstand that, so that reactor remains theoretical rather than practical.
The genius of the nuclear lightbulb design is the irrotational vortex of neon gas that contains the plasma - this design separates the hot stuff from any solid materials that might melt. This vortex provides the pressure required to reach criticality and separates the plasma from the single crystal beryllium oxide walls, which in turn separates the neon vortex from the reaction mass (hydrogen gas seeded with tungsten nanoparticles when used as a rocket engine and water when used as a power plant). At that temperature, the plasma emits most of its energy as a black body radiator and the SC BeO walls are designed to pass through all of that radiation. The constant flow of neon cools down the entire system.
Like I said, UAC actually built functional prototypes that went just short of using fissile material. The non-nuclear parts of the design were validated experimentally. The only remaining theoretical parts are precise control of the fission reaction, which they didn't have the computational power for back then, and long term operation/maintenance, since imperfections in the SC beryllium oxide degrade the container and cause it to melt down eventually. There were plans to demonstrate a slow neutron plasma, which would significantly reduce material degradation, but they never got to it before Nixon canceled the Mars program.
> There were plans to demonstrate a slow neutron plasma, which would significantly reduce material degradation, but they never got to it before Nixon canceled the Mars program.
Nuetron damage to container seemed to be the deal breaker to me, thinks for the additional information.
Rocket engines have a long history of obtaining combustion temperatures far in excess of what their combustion chamber would tolerate under static conditions, but yeah, 25kK vs 2kK seems excessive. Also, chemical rockets have an easier time with this trick because the heat is generated inside the propellant, so you just have to stop it from getting out quickly, and the fuel itself is cryogenic and makes for a very convenient coolant.
Still, the fact that the article makes a big deal out of quartz being transparent in the UV makes me wonder if there isn't a clever trick up someone's sleeve. Ideas?
It's so sad to listen to the documentaries and hear how NERVA "is on track to propel mankind to mars by the late 1970s or early 1980s." Ah well. At least we're starting to care about space again!