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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.
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 ...
Advocates of nuclear-powered spacecraft point out that at the time of launch, there is almost no radiation released from the nuclear reactors. Nuclear-powered rockets are not used to lift off the Earth. Nuclear thermal rockets can provide great performance advantages compared to chemical propulsion systems.
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]
The U.S. military is giving Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to make a nuclear-powered spacecraft. Here are the details.
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.
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 ...
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 ...