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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.
Costs to assemble, integrate, prepare and launch the Orion and its launcher, funded separately in the NASA Ground Operations Project, [75] currently about $600 million [76] per year; Costs of the launcher, the SLS, for the Orion spacecraft; For 2021 to 2025, NASA estimates [77] yearly budgets for Orion from $1.4 to $1.1 billion.
Project Orion was the first serious attempt to design a nuclear pulse rocket. A design was formed at General Atomics during the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the idea of reacting small directional nuclear explosives utilizing a variant of the Teller–Ulam two-stage bomb design against a large steel pusher plate attached to the spacecraft ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States plans to test a spacecraft engine powered by nuclear fission by 2027 as part of a long-term NASA effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of propelling ...
Orion spacecraft as of December 2019. The Orion spacecraft was designed for the Constellation program as a crew compartment for use in low Earth orbit. Lockheed Martin was selected as the prime contractor for the Orion project on August 31, 2006, [18] and Boeing was selected to build its primary heat shield on September 15, 2006. [19]
After the ban of nuclear weapons in space by the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, nuclear power has been discussed at least since 1972 as a sensitive issue by states. [8] Space nuclear power sources may experience accidents during launch, operation, and end-of-service phases, resulting in the exposure of nuclear power sources to extreme physical conditions and the release of radioactive materials ...
STORY: NASA's Orion capsule is setting new records[Date: November 28, 2022][Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator]"On Saturday, Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft ...
The U.S. military is giving Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to make a nuclear-powered spacecraft. Here are the details. For the First Time Since '65, the U.S. Military Will Blast a Nuclear Reactor ...