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NASA artist rendering, from 1999, of the Project Orion pulsed nuclear fission spacecraft. Project Orion was a study conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA, [1] and NASA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft.
The knowledge gained provided data to prevent nuclear yields in case of accidental detonations—for example, in a plane crash. The John shot on July 19, 1957, was the only test of the Air Force's AIR-2A Genie rocket with a nuclear warhead. [3] It was fired from an F-89J Scorpion fighter over Yucca Flats at the Nevada National Security Site.
Nuclear pulse propulsion or external pulsed plasma propulsion is a hypothetical method of spacecraft propulsion that uses nuclear explosions for thrust. [1] It originated as Project Orion with support from DARPA , after a suggestion by Stanislaw Ulam in 1947. [ 2 ]
Watch live as a Nasa spacecraft returns to Earth with the largest asteroid sample in history on Sunday 24 September. After a seven-year, four-billion-mile journey across space, the ambitious NASA ...
Nuclear power sources could also be used to provide the spacecraft with electrical power for operations and scientific instrumentation. [12] Examples: NERVA (Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications), a US nuclear thermal rocket program; Project Rover, an American project to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. The program ran at the Los ...
About 85% of the bomb's energy could be directed into the target as plasma, albeit with a very wide cone angle of 22.5 degrees. A 4,000 ton spacecraft would use 5 kiloton charges, and a 10,000 ton spacecraft would use 15 kiloton charges. [1] Orion also researched the possibility of nuclear shaped charges being used as weapons in space warfare ...
The United States and Russia are set to face off over nuclear weapons in space on Wednesday at the United Nations Security Council, which is due to vote on a U.S.-drafted resolution calling on ...
Watch Boeing's Starliner spacecraft undock from the International Space Station and begin its return to Earth on Friday evening. The spacescraft is returning uncrewed, leaving behind the two NASA ...