Russia Planning Nuclear Rocket

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Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket

From the report, we are not talking about Orion, or direct thrust from nuclear heating, but rather some sort of electric propulsion system using electricity from a reactor for a proposed mission to Mars.

Something like ion drive, or plasma drive would likely cut transit time by at least ¾ for a manned trip to Mars, and if a ground base were established, a nuclear power supply would handle the reduced solar energy levels there.

I’d take this with a grain of salt, because the cost quoted for this is a bit over US $¾ billion, which sounds like a quote from Never Land.

One comment

  1. elgatoso says:

    America need to go back to the development of some kind of nuclear propulsion.Chemical rockets can't be improved to much.Some projects that were done here were NERVA,Kiwi,Peewee,Phoebus,NRX,SNRE,Dumbo,STNP,Project Timberwind,Project Prometheus,NEP,Project Longshot.No one passed the prototype stage.

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