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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.
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 ]
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 ...
Project Orion in the 1960s envisioned the use of nuclear shaped charges for propulsion. The nuclear explosion would turn a tungsten plate into a jet of plasma that would then hit the drive pusher plate. 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.
Orion Lite is an unofficial name used in the media for a lightweight crew capsule proposed by Bigelow Aerospace in collaboration with Lockheed Martin. It was to be based on the Orion spacecraft that Lockheed Martin was developing for NASA. It was never developed. It was to be a lighter, less capable and a less expensive version of the full ...
Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract by federal agency DARPA in partnership with NASA to build out an experimental nuclear-powered spacecraft that aims to make trips to the moon and Mars more ...
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 ...
Mini-Mag Orion (MMO), or Miniature Magnetic Orion, is a proposed type of spacecraft propulsion based on the Project Orion nuclear propulsion system. The Mini-Mag Orion system achieves propulsion by compressing fissile material in a magnetic field, a Z-pinch, until fission occurs. This fission reaction propels the craft.