The Real Reason NASA Is Developing A Nuclear Rocket Engine! 

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Hi, were did you get the 3 to 5 factor? I have never seen a nuclear thermal rocker doing 3 times better in terms of specific impulse, and taking into account the extra weight of the hardware 3 times is a stretch. I agree with the development but we should be more critical of false promises. China is going to do it first by the way, if they don't mind dropping monomethylhydrazine stages on thier population, nothing is going to slow them.

Von Braun was literally one of the most famous Nazi scientists during his lifetime. There’s a Tom Lehrer song from the 60s about How he was a Nazi.

@@jaimeduncan6167 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊 1:15

Apologies for being that guy but there was a mistake in the narration. You said free electrons were used to bombard and split the atoms, but it is neutrons. It even said so in the text of the picture you used at the time. But overall great video.

Yes, but NASA had no need to deploy it. NASA was already beating the Russkies to the moon, and there was no one else to beat. Not until Elon came along and proposed his own Mars mission. At that point NASA starts dusting off that old technology left over from the 1960s to beat Elon. Simple !

@@SeattlePioneer Yes. Simple short sightedness. It is like painfully struggling to reach a cave of untold knowledge and riches then standing at the threshold and saying: "Meh." and turning around and going back.

@@dfgggg89 I give Werner Von Braun a lot of credit! He not only leverage Adolph Hitler to allow him to carry out his purposes, but Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and Eisenhower as well! And he not only had the imagination to create astounding rocket machines in his brain, but the engineering and leadership ability (and political skills) to turn them into working reality. AND, he managed to avoid being locked up after a Nuremburg trial, and go on to signal honors given by the nation that defeated his native country. That's quite remarkable, even if his creations didn't take a man to Mars. YET.

Yes but not the means. The theory was available but things like super alloys and high tech mosfets for example were not developed.

Lack of urgency in promoting human capability. Being shackled to the limits of our planet is narrow minded. As soon as humans start exploring other worlds they will wonder why we didn’t do this sooner. It’s all out there waiting to be discovered.

Thanks for clearing that up. The video had me confused there for a second.

He repeats that "electron bombardment", it sounds very bad

Yeah, once could be just a slip .. but trough entire explanation of nuclear fission? Trustworthy ..

That it can be achieved with electrons was a secret he wasn't supposed to tell.

Thank you. I lack the technical expertise to have caught that.

😄They are simple in working principle. There is a difference. And starting up a FULL bridge rectifier flow engine is anything but simple.

@@mennovanlavieren3885 Well, obviously the working principle of rockets (your traditional solid or liquid here) in itself is easy. Just like a lot of things around you. Just like how the basic principle of a musical instrument is to make sound. But in actuality, it takes months, if not years to master the art of playing an instrument. My comment was meant to be lighthearted, for a quick laugh, coming from someone who did struggle in her propulsion class. Hope you did have a good chuckle or at least a dry laugh tho . At least for the sake of my claims of me having a good humour :)

It is very simple in the way he explained it. In related news tax law is also very simple. You make money and the government wants some of it, and that's tax law explained...

It is a simple concept, that doesn't mean it's simple to achieve it just means your exploiting simple forces to achieve it. Car engines are more complex mechanically speaking the thing that makes rockets difficult is the precision involved, the propellent itself and the need to design your equipment to be robust enough to survive the forces and energy. So yes making a rocket it super complex, but how a rocket works is pretty damn simple.

What, shove fuel and oxidizer in one end, burned gas comes out the other really, really fast. Mass moving fast has lots of energy, so there's the old Equal and Opposite Reaction thing the other way that makes the motor push really hard. Everything else is just minutia. Well, really complex, complicated and detailed minutia, anyway!!! Just razzin' on ya (=joke), I come from a different but equally complicated industry, I know exactly what you mean!

did you get to moon thou?

@@meggi8048Yeah, he went on the Apollo 11.5 mission

"Then Nothing" is not actually accurate! FYI, Man has not been to the moon, never has and never will because man is not able to.

The iss, cassini, the shuttle, hubble, voyagers, skylab, mir, viking, veneera, etc... are nothing? Lol

is earth flat to ....muppet

Probably the exact idea they will use.

I think I'm the future they will have craft that look like what we see in science fiction but because of the gravity well they will never land on a planet just move between them

im visioning musks starship lifting to orbit, connecting to draco engines and away we go

Not realistic at all. This is just another way for legacy space companies to continue to waste more of the American tax dollars. The legacy space companies have already wasted 50+ years and countless dollars to toss rockets into the ocean and stay in LEO. The only reason the Government is now doing anything is because the legacy money train going to those companies has all but dried up and no longer active and be meaningless once the Starship begins to fly thanks to SpaceX, These companies will overcharge, over spend and not deliver as they always have done. We can only hope they let SpaceX compete and help and build a better rocket that uses this tech that belongs to the tax payer NOT legacy companies that are only there to waste money and go nowhere and always need more more. This rocket will be 100x more expensive only to shave off a few weeks in space to deliver a tiny payload.

Musk seems to have no problem changing his designs at a second notice. I would guess he would incorporate this new technology into Starship as soon as he could.

The word nuclear scares people and governments. Despite its use in submarines and aircraft carriers for decades

There is a difference between a nuclear engine and a nuclear reactor. The nerva can be build in a way that it exhausts radioactive Gas. In the 60's they feared this could escalate the nuclear arms race. Check Project pluto for example. Thats why it can fly so qickly now. The technology is basicaly complete.

@@juleswoodbury58Danish? Long Island?

@@frimi6023 that’s a proper cogent response. Thanks fella

Not really. NERVA used high enrichment fuel rods, so the exhaust was quite hot, and the mass requirements for shielding in the 1960's was prohibitive. DRACO is using low enrichment fuel and advanced materials to reduce the radiation produced as well as the structural mass required. If you google the docs, DRACO is also going to involve prototyping electrothermal ship power systems, as well as integrating nuclear powered ion engines, so it isn't just an engine; its an entire platform. This is a 3 stage program, and we are literally at the end of Stage 1. The thing I'm chuckling about is what isn't said. They predict DRACO will have a specific impulse of 2,000+, which is where they get the Earth-Mars transfer in 6 weeks. What hasn't been mentioned is that numbers like that could result in an Earth-Moon trip of around 8 hours. So about the time of a New York to London commercial flight. If SuperHeavy finally gets off the ground and proves operational, then all of the private space station start ups will swing into high gear, meaning that dockyards and actual flight concourses will be feasible.

Going to Mars for any worthwhile reason and purpose is as achievable as nuclear fusion, aka not gonna happen.

@@fs5866 Yeah, i agree. We should focus on the moon first what with it being a hell of a lot closer and all. The moon is the perfect jumping off point for our expansion into the solar system and hopefully beyond. If we can just get a simple base built we can start mining, not to send material back to earth yet, just so the base can expand without needing constant supply shipments. Eventually it'd grow into a lunar city, fully self sufficient doing science and manufacturing goods that can only be done/made in low gravity environments. And that's what'll make the whole endeavor worthwhile in the end.

Be careful what you wish for though. DARPA is Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although I’m not opposed to them building a Donnager class Battleship…..As long as it’s ours 😂

@@fs5866 - "Going to Mars for any worthwhile reason and purpose is as achievable as nuclear fusion, aka not gonna happen." - Nasa had NERVA under developement for 17 years. And they had a functional engine. Getting to Mars using the NERVA was definitely possible by the early 1980s. Nixon cancelled the NERVA program in 1973. As for "going to Mars for any worthwhile reason and purpose"; the US exists today because the Puritans saw it as a chance to start again. And I live in Australia; we started as a dumping ground for the prisoners the British could no longer send to "the colonies" because of their revolution.

Yeah, but he was playing with monopoly money. Sure, the technology of the time could have done it, but it really wasn't suitable. It would have been kinda similar to what ocean gate was doing. That is, using things that could, but mostly shouldn't be used. Everything is vastly better now. Including our understanding of things. Like how to block radiation. Nevermind how much we've learned about metallurgy.

A bit like the hyperspace rings the Jedi used in star wars... 🤔 That would be sweet to see happen!

That way is wise,. So on starting up the nuclear mills ...in space would be a guaranteed cold start.

I think instead, or maybe similarly, the nuclear Draco engines can be used to build a much more massive ship, where the Starship can be docked and used as a shuttle to ferry to and from planet surface. This pretty much takes us back to large ocean vessels and a small boat to get to land.

" then settle into a "framework", consisting of the nuclear engine(s)" You were thinking of that ring with engines that Jedi Starships use in Star Wars weren't you? You carefully pilot it to the dock-in mechanism of the ring and the starship attaches to this ring of engines, then you can travel at hyper speed for far longer distances, or should I say, far faster than it can go on its own. XD

So what do they do once they land on a planet then can’t get back into orbit without the nuclear engine

I'd say it is pretty awesome right now. Space X, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, NASA and that is just getting started!!

Political correctness gone mad!

Clean your ears.

Thanks babe! Love you x

Presumably a noble gas might be better, or at least something which has more mass, higher density and is easier to store if you're not going to bother with a chemical reaction. Similar to the propellant for an ion engine.

@@theharper1 The NERVA engine only works because of the low mass of hydrogen. Ion engines do better with a higher mass atom, hence they prefer Xenon.

@mennovanlavieren3885 OK it's not clear why hydrogen should be the only suitable propellant. Unfortunately the Wikipedia article isn't enlightening. There's lots of reasons to avoid hydrogen.

Im no rocket scientist so bear with me with this simple question. Why not use water? What are the downsides?

@ChefManPS3 corrosion of components? Interesting question though.

This is the first source I've come across that's mentioned an actual propulsion method. That's what I was most confused about. The couple of article mentioning an engine didn't go in to depth. Technically fuel is just the first thing you burn to produce energy. That energy simply imparts a force on something else. We haven't actually applied any form of nuclear engine that would be fit for space. Only the uranium is technically fuel, and its very energy dense. The only way that I know of we've applied nuclear energy to produce motion is to use its heat to turn water to steam to turn a turbine. Water doesn't "fuel" the reaction though. I'm not really trying to be semantic, but I think there is supposed to be an important distinction between what is a fuel, and what is a propellant.

@@blkspade23 The uranium is the energy source (fuel). The hydrogen is the reaction mass. (Might call it propellant, Idk) I don't think being a little semantic is out of place in this context.

Or the water source for cooling

@@jahramika the water would not cool enough, they use the hydrogen in its liquid state to do that on the first pass through the reactor then they feed the hydrogen back through to pick up more heat and then discharged to provide thrust.

There’s a great documentary on RU-vid about when the AEC built KIWI, a very impressive stationary nuclear thermal rocket engine sometime in the late 50s or early 60s, I don’t exactly remember the year. It produced a lot of power for a very long time

Correct! Old, but gold!

Sorry, but nuclear thermal rockets, though vastly better than chemical rockets, just cannot do continuous 1g acceleration. They are still very much short impulse systems, short being a relative term. A nuclear rocket might fire for an hour or two to accelerate to cruising speed and to decelerate on arrival. The rest of the time the spacecraft coasts.

@@MrRlnansel k. I wasn't sure if th 1g acceleration was possible, but I typed the comment before I actually researched it. Thanks, I stand corrected.

@@blythehaynes3765 1g acceleration can only be sustained for a few minutes due to the maximum speed of the exhaust gasses. Also the amount of energy required even using a fission reactor burning through the reaction fuel, why the 'Project Orion' nuclear spacecraft was designed to use a pusher plate with nuclear bombs pushing the Spacecraft.

My guess as well.

you can't build anything with unproven theory.

Hi Christian, excellent questions! I am a Aerospace Engineering Senior Student and my thesis was a comparative analysis of nuclear and chemical propulsion. Most of your questions are already answered, since engines of the type of the video (Nuclear Thermal Rocket - NTR) already operated (for a long time, with a lot of restarts, and a good ISP, look into NERVA program). The weight and thrust are closely related, since what matters the most is the thrust to weight ratio, for nuclear engines is at max 20 (as far as I recall, may be it is a little more) so they are not suitable for launches, only for space use. The thrust, for nuclear thermal propulsion, is quite high (hundreds of thousands of newtons) since the power is also very high. Regarding the temperatures, the engines operated (during the sixties and seventies!) already reached up to 2200K nd worked for hours. Some different fuel configurations (like grahite coated peeble fuel) can reach even higher temperatures (up to 3000K). I recommend you to read about NERVA, project Timberwind so you can see more about the design, materials used, etc. The biggest point is price, since no production models were created (only flight test configurations and prototypes) so it is very hard to compare to chemical rockets, but it will be higher. In any case, the higher price is compensated by the excellent capabilities of the NTR. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Sorry for the long answer

@@arthurdefreitaseprecht2648 First of all, don't apologise for long answers, if it's necessary so be it and excellent answers too! 😊 My question about the temperature the engines are required to work at was more about the fact (at least to my understanding) that this temperature would be constant for the whole time whether the engine is working or not. Or is there some way of bringing the temperature down between firings? Sorry if my questions are obvious to someone who has worked on a thesis, but I promise I'll look up NERVA project Timberwood after this one... 😄

@@chrisantoniou4366 thank you very much for the kind reply! So basically, while the engine is firing, yes, the temperature is high and constant, and the reactor is "on" (controlled by the control drums/control rods). When the firing ends, the propellant stops going through the core, but the reactor is turned "off" (by inserting the control rods/ turning the control drums), so no huge amount of heat is generated. The temperature of the core then is radiated away, and it cools to much lower temperatures (i am not sure, but it is some hundreds of K, due to decay heat, but in any case the temperature is low enough so it does not pose any risk to the integrity of the reactor). This subject is a little complex but fascinating, if you are interested I can give more recommendations about the NTRs, in any case NERVA and project Timberwind are an excellent start, since one was tested and the other was researched very thoroughly. Hope that I cleared some of your doubts! Have a nice day

High temperature water is corrosive. It splits into monatomic oxygen and hydrogen when exposed to radiation. Hydrogen gives better specific energy if thermally heated and ion drives work better with xenon or krypton (more mass equals more thrust in ion drives and krypton is inert). In short, nothing is as simple as you think.

@@allangibson8494 Not simple, but I do believe that those objections can be engineered around. We have done so many times with "impossible" drives. It may not be a good idea, but has anyone actually tested it to see?

Water would give lower Specific Impulse (a measure of fuel efficiency for rockets). For solid core nuclear thermal rockets it probably does make sense to use LH2 as propellant, even given all the hassles of storing it and how large the tanks must be for LH2. For higher performance nuclear rockets (gaseous fission reactors), the performance tradeoff between LH2 and H2O is still pretty big. A solid-core nuclear rocket might give a specific impulse of maybe 1000 sec, more than twice as good as the best chemical rockets using LH2 and LOX, but gaseous core systems might have specific impulse in the range of 10,000 sec using LH2. Using water instead with such an engine the specific impulse might drop to, say, 2000 sec. This would still be a FABULOUS rocket. For one thing, the propellant tank would be smaller than the cargo hold. That is the way a good spaceship should be.

Any of you brilliant people know what material they use to contain 5000+ temps?

@@lii1Il Nuclear thermal rockets don’t run that hot. Ion drives use use the same containment techniques as fusion reactors - magnetic and electric fields with the plasma never contacting the walls of the accelerator. Ion drives can’t generate the same thrust as the thermal rockets but use less reaction mass because of the much higher exhaust velocity. Ion drives can’t lift a spacecraft to orbit but are far more efficient once in vacuum.

Why did it take the Apollo astronauts 72 hours to reach lunar orbit? Even accounting for initial activity in Earth orbit it's a lot longer than 12 hours.

China will be ready in lest than 5 years. They did not care about hydrazine in towns, they will not care about careful testing. They answer to nobody.

The NERVA nuclear engine was successfully fully tested in the 1960s.

Interesting.

I was going to ask if water would be a better propellant. Easy handling, no special precautions need be taken & already used to get oxygen to the ISS so could also be used to supply any crewed vehicles. As there is no need to burn the propellant you just need mass to throw out the back. A final bonus is that water & fission is an understood technology.

@@chrissouthgate4554 It's all about tread offs. It's down sides are that water is pretty heavy. It also has the annoying habit of freezing (space is cold). So unless you have a lot of things going on in your mission while getting where your going your going to have to supply a lot of heat which is going to use a fair bit of power. The other problem is, How are you going to throw it? Not mechanically. Magnetically? No matter what system you pick to throw it, that system throws other things better. It's not like your idea is a bad one so much as there are other ideas that a slightly better.

I was going to say how hydrogen is extremely slippery gas and can finds it's way out of most things. Probably going to be even more of a problem in the vacuum of space so increasing losses further. I wish them all success but it's not going to be easy.

@@lucidmoses Steam moves pretty fast & you are heating it with a nuclear reactor; superheated steam would be even better. Yes, it weighs more which would a minus (though that would mean more compact tankage), but that becomes a plus when you pitch it out the back. (Mass x Velocity = Thrust)

I worked at Air Products and Chemicals and manufactured the liquid hydrogen for the NERVA program testing. The max time of thrusting was around 20 minutes and around 20,000 lbs of thrust. NASA had preliminary spacecraft layouts that could hold 18 people, but they would launch 3 ships with only 6 inside each ship. If any thing went wrong they could get in the remaining ships and continue the mission.

Hope they do for sure 🚀

They prolly already are. Prolly a fusion one.

No. Anti-LH2 due to issues with storage and transfer

It baffles me how out of touch with reality those Elon fanboys are 🤣 In order to be able to develop anything even remotely close to nuclear you have to got through thousands of approvals and be to some degree affiliated with the military or be a defense contractor. That's why so very few companies can do it. No, SpaceX fanboy, SpaceX is not developing any nuclear engine. Not even in a decade or two. Grow up and be bit more realistic.

@@fifski excerpt that Elon is working with the military (a contract of 100M), the Air Force, and the White House. Tell me you don’t know shit about Musk and reality without telling me. Oh jee you’re already told me. Why did you delete your comment? Be a man, own up to your derision, and apologize. You’d look better than deleting your comment.

"The rocket worked perfectly it just landed on the wrong planet... (A cop out if I ever saw one...)" I dont think that was his decision.

@@Pharozos ...absolutely, he was just following orders

Ha last week I had a conversation and they were like what is one good thing that came from Hitler. I was like well without the nazis we would be about 50 years behind in rocketry and space exploration

@@scooble You should watch some documentaries about the guy. Its not as simple as nazi bad man with wernher von braun.

Wernher von Braun willingly used slave labor. If y'all are fine with that, godspeed!

the people who block space flight are right now in office, if the other dude gets back into office, its probably 3 years ;)

@meggi your cult leader can't even SPELL space!!

@@stevefisher2553 what do you mean?

lmao... you need a lession in reality. You sound like Elon Musk... this will only happen when and if it is profitable to do so, greed and money has been the bane of space exploration since the onset. Until the money factor is removed ( like thats going to happen) The exploration of space will be dollars .. not ability or tech design that happens to be built. At present we will only explore space when it makes money to do so, or money is available. The advancement of humanity went away long ago. Unless dollars are involved..This will be our downfall , just on the edge of development of something. And we shall fail in this , greed will limit our progress, because money is what enslaved humanity from its concept and use. Life and progress has value.. to put a dollar value on all else and life itself made us a slave to money. We are not going anywhere... space wise or advancement as a species.

It's not that simple. Nuclear rockets are an engineering problem and have constraints that other uses for atomic power don't. The weight of the engine is an issue, as is the cost, the total thrust, and the shielding that would be required for humans. It isn't even certain that such an engine can be built at all, let alone have the performance envisaged to make it worthwhile.

@@chrisantoniou4366 those engines were already built ant tested up to the flight configuration, look into the NERVA program. The engines even outperformed the requirements, they were not used for a lack of application that required so much performance. It would not be hard to replicate them, the biggest problem is the cost. Not even the radiation is a big deal, since interplanetary space is VERY radioactive (from galactic cosmic rays and solar wind and flares), the faster travel times enabled by nuclear propulsion compensates the radiation dose due to the reactor.

Use the moon’s water & solar panels to make the hydrogen there. It’s so cold on the moon, you could practically store it in buckets.🤣 The other problem is you need to get oxygen from somewhere in order for the hydrogen to burn.

When you produce hydrogen from water using electricity then you produce oxygen on other side Remenber: H2O

@@zeljkorubesa473 Oh yes, keep the oxygen in buckets too.

The answer is obvious..has been for many years..use Water....

The answer is obvious..has been for many years..use Water....

I was so desperate for answers I even had to research how long it takes a nuclear power plant to heat up 1 Gallon of water at the initial temperature. I couldn't find my answer online except finding sources that elaborate on the essential parts and necessities of running a nuclear power plant and the prolonged startup times. It's a pretty long time and mathematical research shows it as being

The NERVA nuclear engine was successfully fully tested in the 1960s. Why NASA said it will fly a nuclear engine by 2027.

To produce trace amounts of antimatter is horribly expensive!

Hydrogen can not radioactively decay. There is nothing to decay into.

@@ellsworth1956 Tritium can but that would require the hydrogen to absorb 2 neurons, and since space is already a radiation filled hellscape it’s completely fine to have radioactive stuff coming out the back if the engine is away from Earth.