Nuclear Propulsion From Earth to Mars in Just 45 Days 

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I love how this video started with rail travel 160 years ago. I remember talking to my Great Grandmother about her life being alive before the first flight of the Wright Brothers and seeing man walk on the moon during her lifetime.

Check out the steam engine at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="45">0:45</a>. Notice the two closest tracks with a water trough running through their center. Some engines had a water scoop, used for refuling (steam uses water) while still traveling at speed. No need to stop divert and under a water tower to refill, trains would run to a tighter schedual.

Fun fact - the NERVA test engines were called Kiwis because they were flightless birds. (Source - one of my professors in college actually worked on NERVA, had some interesting stories including the destruction test to see just what the maximum power output was -- no, didn't explode, however, it did shake itself apart as fuel rods were being spit out the nozzle).

Favorite Mega Project to date. As a Rocket Scientist, I declare kudos for phenomenal blazer performance AND an incredibly well researched video.

I was just 5 years old when we first landed on the moon and the thought of possibly still being alive to witness the dawn of the era of routine interplanetary travel makes me very happy! What a time to be alive

Just to be clear the "bimodal" isn't the NTR/NEP but the modes of the reactor itself. Since it can be both a rocket thruster (NTR mode) and also a power reactor (which then powers the NEP mode) it is known as a "bimodal reactor". The "fun" part here is that by adding a liquid oxygen injector system to the NTR mode you can greatly increase the thrust of the NTR which has benefits for short length/high trust segments of the voyage. This then turns it into a TRI-modal power plant. (Might want to check out the "Triton NTR" concept)

There was another nuclear powered design I saw in the late 60s. it was called Orion, a name often recycled in space work. The premise was you built a REALLY BIG steel plate, with REALLY BIG springs, like coils on McPherson struts. You then built a large cabin and storage structures connected to the coils. You then exploded a tiny nuclear bomb behind the plate, calculated for position and yield very carefully. The shock wave would push the ship in the desired direction. As soon as the first bomb's effect dissipated, a second bomb would be detonated behind the plate, pushing the ship again. Repeat this until you are halfway to Mars, when you flip the ship 180 degrees, then repeat the process to slow the ship. This would require a lot of radiation shielding, but what the heck, that plate alone will weigh between 20,000 and 50,000 tons. The article said, with enough bombs, you could reasonably reach 15 to 20 % of light speed, making trips to Alpha Centauri possible in a crew's lifetime. As for the Greenies worried about radiation in space, have you any idea what's out there now? Damn good thing we have the magnetosphere and Van Allen belts.

what a time to be alive...45 days to mars awhile we're still killing eachother because we can't get along.. lol

Not a bad video to release on First Contact Day.

Finally some real progress on the space propulsion tech.

Watch a lot of your channels and can't get enough from science and the universe. More topics like these!!🤓

Fantastic video. I've been following these developments for a while, and now that Simon is talking about it, I know it's real.

Although nuclear thermal rocketry can offer some advantages in terms of payload, claims of a 45-day trip to Mars using this technology are not supported by critical evaluations. The reality is that the typical ideal trajectory for a Mars transit takes approximately 180 days and requires a propulsive delta-v of about 4.2 km/s. This is only slightly more than the minimum energy trajectory of 8.5 months which requires a delta-v of approximately 3.8 km/s. However, attempting to reduce the transit time to just 140 days would require a delta-v of over 6 km/s and would result in a halving of the effective payload. Reducing the transit time further to 130 days would halve the payload again and make direct entry impossible, requiring additional deceleration burns further decreasing payload. It is important to have a basic understanding of delta-v and orbital mechanics and not to repeat dubious claims without proper evaluation. Claims of a 45-day trip to Mars are likely based on overly optimistic estimations of nuclear system mass and rare close conjunctions, while also neglecting the need for deceleration prior to atmospheric entry for fast transits and ignoring the resulting massive reductions in payload capacity.

Thank you for covering this concept! Love seeing nuclear engines getting wider coverage. You should look into the wonderfully awesome idea of a Nuclear Salt Water Rocket or NSWR. A idea that could provide high thrust and high efficiency. Basically the closest we could (in theory) built today that would match the engines in The Expanse!

Wait…wait, Doc! Are you tellin’ me that this sucker is nuclear?!

Love this! Really hoping that the bimodal system gets chosen and not only works, but works SPECTACULARLY well. The NERVA research - or maybe I should say, research related to nuclear engines - came back more than once between 1973 and 2003. The rocket scientists have done their best not to let this one go!

My personal preference is the nuclear plasma thermal engine, with fissionable plutonium finely divided, stored in neutron damped storage, and pumped out into the nozzle with duterium, fissioning in place thanks to magnetic confinement, and bathing the plasma in a 1H gas which then becomes a 23,000 deg. C plasma also confined with near "c" exhaust speed.

This idea was conceived, tested, found practical in the late1950’s and into 1960’s as the Nuclear Impulse rocket, which was referenced in TOS Star Trek Impulse Power, and where to be used as Space Tugs to Mars. With the end of manned missions into space, and going to Mars, the already developed NEVA project was shelved.

I love how there was an ad just after he said, "Wait for it," perfect timing!

Awesome video as usual 😊

Continue to be curious and come up with these famtastic videos Simon We love them

LMAO at the intro. Simon starts talking about going West in the 19th century before the railroads and I'm like "will they make a Donner Party joke" and you made a Donner Party joke! Love it!

I like that simon covers the themes that i want to know more about.

Every time I hear "crewed mission", I think "No, these are rather sophisticated missions, thank you..."

something about that rocket that could "get someone to mars in 45 days". It would most likely be closer to 90 days. Bc you need to break for roughly the same amount of time you accelerate at those speeds or you'll either shoot right past mars, or slam into it. It's possible we could do a slingshot looping pattern between mars and it's moons to siphon off energy. But 45 days is a very "in laboratory conditions" statement is all.

As Thomas Sowell says, in most instances, there are only trade-offs, not solutions.

Movie-universe NASA spends over half its budget dealing with Matt Damon's space shenanigans.

Great video… well researched 👍👍👍

I appreciate the Iain M Banks reference Feersum Endjinn

One of the older Mazda diesel engines used to use a pressure wave supercharger. I believe it was called the "Comprex" supercharger. Really neat physics, but built up too much carbon to be reliable.

Don’t know why but your door handle was doing my head in, just being there throughout the video, apart from that probably my favourite video of yours so far

Forget about Mars. Let's get to the asteroid belt and use the material there to build 100 million O'Neill cylinders. Then we can let those slowly drift to the Kuiper belt and build a billion more.

This right here is exactly the key. I mean I don't know if this idea will work out but we DO need some sort of way to make the trip faster and safer. Compare how getting to Oregon is via wagon train (like in the famous game) versus getting their via railroad and you'll see what I mean.

All that Nasa or SpaceX need to do is to hook up a spaceship to *Simon* - he's nuclear-powered! I'm betting on Simon hosting the first RU-vid channel to broadcast from Mars!

Thank you for this. You always have cook things to say, but this blows me away

WOW this video was fantastic. Not being the best at science I sometimes have difficulty in understanding some of the techno-babel, but this video was very succinct.

I saw the title and wondered briefly if this was the return of Orion. Interesting content anyway.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="98">1:38</a> a man. a plan. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="424">7:04</a> race to Mars <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="653">10:53</a> fearsome engine <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="898">14:58</a> an explosive history

NTP was the propulsion of choice in the early 1950's TV "space opera" shows like SPACE PATROL, ROCKY JONES: SPACE RANGER and TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET and was the classic "atomic rocket"

Any advanced alien civilization watching are surely going to mock us. Would be like watching the Beverly hillbillies driving down a street ... "Look at those monkeys strapping nuclear bombs to the back of their craft for propulsion and polluting the universe with radioactivity. They even attached a laser pen to the rear!"

keep in mind that the faster you go the more time you need to slow down, seems like we'd be hitting diminishing returns pretty quickly at these speeds

The Space Shuttle probably set back overall space exploration in hindsight, but it was the single greatest advertisement for the space program, that thing was sexy. Great video! Thank you!

Omouamoua engines were fast! We could learn from observation. 😆

Yes - Favorite mega projects video!

Maybe the need to expel heat could be a third propulsion system? the right shaped reflectors could use the heats natural property of diffusion to add another small force helping the whole process.

NASA's Ion Propulsion engines reportedly can propel a spacecraft up to 200K MPH but it has low thrust and takes a long time to reach full acceleration. Still, much more feasible than chemical rockets.

Excellent stuff bro

I think the nuclear engine that directly uses the thrust from fission which Scott Manley made a video on about probably only now needs enough propellant for maneuvering.

Did someone say nuclear?! 😂

Such a vehicle could never, and I cannot stress this enough. Ever enter the atmosphoere of any planet we want to inhabit. As a cruise ship to ferry goods and people back and forth, perfect.

Thanks for yet another space video I can share with my son. Although, I'll have to explain to him your recent fascination with cannibalism.

You should do a series of modern day additions to wonders of like the three famous dome stadiums in America. Like the astrodome and the Superdome

It occurs to me that relying on thrust over long times leads to the risk of missing the planet completely if the engine glitches even for a day or so.

Dude. I smoke watching your videos. I find myself drawn in. Your tone. Your sense of intrigue. Always keeps me hooked

Would this allow you to have constant acceleration and deceleration like in the expanse? Like the flip and burn technique?

Would this pressure wave supercharger work similarly to the exhaust expansion chamber on a two stroke engine?

I'm just as shocked as anybody. There's still universities in Florida?!

SpaceX's Starship is the Hyperloop of space craft.

You forgot to mention that the pressure wave rotor rockets would use an aero spike which has also been around for decades, but now has a much more useful reason To be used. This flattens the ISP curve between atmospheric and vacuum engINes vs a bell.

Well done to this episode's author with the Iain M Banks Culture reference!

Somebody's gonna need a lot of Dramamine. 😥

I wonder if having a flare of radiation blasting off the back of your craft would affect radio communications in any way?

To be fair, back in the 50's they were trying to find uses for nuclear technology for EVERYTHING. It was the new big thing, and they still hadn't worked out how dangerous it could be. Nuclear rockets though... Makes sense to me. Accidents would of course tragically kill a few people, but at least it won't be a Chernobyl type catastrophe.

I thought about this before it was even thought of then a few years later i start seeing more and more about it..This has happened to a lot of recent inventions..I swear somebody is reading my mind for ideas then creating them..

"...microgravity and other stuff that does things to your body that watching MSNBC does to your brain..." I actually had to pause in a fit of laughter. An unexpected bit of humor, and one I wouldn't mind seeing more often in future :)

I find it frustrating that we could have done all this so much sooner!

That is what we were doing in my village many ,many yrs ago .We didn't have TV or newspaper so we couldn't copy it from anywhere . So we invented "Rocket" Up and goes in a jiff"! We gathered left overs from fire works that didnt explode placed it underneath an empty bean can..Boom watch the can flying into space at the speed of light .

That was very slick about the rocket scientist and wearing a nice blazer doing a RU-vid channel 😂😂😂😂. Love your sly dry humor

Dat MSNBC joke 😂

Imagine how far advanced we would be if politicians were not involved…. Or if 10% of the defense budget went into scientific research for space exploration

I need to be in a quiet room.. just to hear this guy. He speak just loud enough to hear himself. And then he whispers tidbits under his breath.

😂😂😂 I love the placement of the ads, "Wait for it!!!". 🙈

"as watching msnbc does to your brain... ruin it." lol nice quip, and certainly true.😀

The Expanse… here we come!

You had me at supercharger. I'm all in! :)

Im guessing ut will be a gella of a lot cheaper to put stuff in space as well with those specific impulses. Would be nice to see a video on the economics of such rockets

The casual dunking on MSNBC was fucking great

Some people are so scared of nuclear pollution that they'll drown in non-nuclear pollution.

Brilliant episode

Fun Fact about space travel, there is no resistence in space. So there is nothing to slow a traveling ship down. Hitting light speed exiting the the atmosphere toward mars the only problem you'd have is stopping.

Watching MSNBC does to your brain…..it ruins it. Simon is right again

Our air and space museum has a NERVA engine on display. It's in the back by the Saturn V engine bell and is beautifully atomic punk.

The bandaid returned for the ad read, nice!

If Humankind chooses to stay on this planet without colonising other planets and moons in at least this system, our species will die out on this planet. All of our eggs, at this time, are in one basket. What most people do not realise is that the sooner we get this off the ground, so to speak, the better off Humankind will be.

I'm no rocket scientist, so I appreciate simple terms like "gigantic space fart".

The best ride to mars is locked up in Lockheed Martins underground garage…Ben Rich, former CEO of skunk works did say “we can take ET home and back again”.

The first honest and unbiased report on the GERD. Bravo!!!

Oh that dig at MSNBC was beautiful - well done sir!

You have so many channels and there all awesome lmao

Was Dual nuclear electric thermo propulsion already trademarked? DNETP drive

Adverising a Watch that you love so much and straight after the cameras stop rolling you put your Rolex on hahaa

Hi, I'm newish here, but have we had a MegaProject on Big Ben yet? I don't know very much about the process, but I'd love to learn!

“Word salad” 😅 I’m stealing that!

for years i thought this guy and babish where the same person and that he had an amazing range of videos

This is one of the reasons i dont see mars missions working: travel time. Its probably possible without a much faster flight mode, but there would be absolutely no way to help them if something went wrong with current speeds

"Cluster Headaches " They would be giving a bad day !!!!

That absolutely is one hell of a sharp blazer

The whole western expansion point is interesting to think about. To go from east to west coast used to take months if not a year. Now you can fly NY to LA and back all between sunrise and sunset. Wild.

It's nice that the writer credited Universe Today.