Nuclear-powered spacecraft may very well be the apex automobile of this century’s house race. Ideas and designs for reactor-equipped rockets have been round for over 50 years however have by no means left the experimental stage. Regardless of ambitions to boldly go the place nobody has gone earlier than, America’s newest push to get nuclear propulsion is to get the higher hand on the nation’s new adversary in orbit, the Individuals’s Republic of China.
The newest nuclear rocket mission obtained off the bottom in 2023 when NASA and DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin with a $499 million contract to construct the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations. DRACO, a really catchy acronym, shall be about 49 toes lengthy and 17.7 toes in diameter to suit on the Vulcan Centaur rocket that can carry it from the floor. The Centaur will quickly be the launch automobile for the Boeing Starliner. Ars Technica laid out the case for the DRACO that US Area Command made to Congress:
DARPA’s web site says it has at all times held to a singular mission of constructing investments in breakthrough applied sciences for nationwide safety. What does a nuclear-powered spaceship must do with nationwide safety? The navy’s perspective was hinted at by Common James Dickinson, a US Area Command officer, in his testimony earlier than Congress in April 2021.
He mentioned that “Beijing is in search of house superiority by means of house assault techniques” and talked about intelligence gathered on the Shijian-17, a Chinese language satellite tv for pc fitted with a robotic arm that may very well be used for “grappling different satellites.” Which will sound like a ridiculous stretch, but it surely was sufficient get a go-ahead for a nuclear spaceship.
The attraction of nuclear-powered rockets is effectivity. They’re twice as environment friendly as conventional chemical rockets as a result of they solely want to hold hydrogen for gasoline and don’t want an oxidizer to create ignition within the vacuum of house. That effectivity can be utilized to achieve extraordinarily excessive speeds. DRACO is meant to be a check mattress for rapid-response rockets between Earth and the Moon, a navy deterrent in house.
There’s just one catch. The rocket wants to hold fissile materials for the reactor, weapons-grade uranium. DRACO will use high-assay-low-enriched uranium (HALEU), a brand new gasoline with a decrease degree of enrichment and way more issue to assemble a nuclear weapon with. The rocket’s use shouldn’t pose a danger to the general public as a result of the Centaur’s chemical rocket shall be used to carry it off the pad.
Ignoring the pending loss of life of the Worldwide Area Station, it’s laborious to not get enthusiastic about house exploration for the time being. NASA’s Artemis program is in the midst of returning to the Moon for good with an outpost on the floor and a station in lunar orbit. From there, Mars and the remainder of the Photo voltaic System may very well be subsequent on the agenda.