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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 ]
A fusion rocket may produce less radiation than a fission rocket, reducing the shielding mass needed. The simplest way of building a fusion rocket is to use hydrogen bombs as proposed in Project Orion, but such a spacecraft would be massive and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits the use of such bombs. For that reason bomb-based ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
The 1 December 1958 issue of Aviation Week included an article, "Soviets Flight Testing Nuclear Bomber", that claimed that the Soviets had greatly progressed a nuclear aircraft program: [10] "[a] nuclear-powered bomber is being flight tested in the Soviet Union. Completed about six months ago, this aircraft has been flying in the Moscow area ...