New centrifugal nuclear thermal space engine

Scientists at Ohio State University have proposed a new type of centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket, this project is also supported by a research contract from NASA. That is, they have financing to do it and they have the project to do it, the two essential things, money and the technology to be able to develop it.

And the idea is to create a rocket engine that is significantly more efficient and faster than current rockets. According to researchers, this rocket engine would reduce a trip to Mars to just 6 months, but here we have talked about projects such as those of the British company Pulsar Fusion or the Russian project that want to create a plasma tugboat with a nuclear fusion engine to travel to Mars in approximately one or two months, Pulsar Fusion's would reach 800,000 km/h, both Pulsar Fusion's. and the Russian one would be with engines that draw energy from fusion reactors, that is, joining atoms, ideally hydrogen atoms, we do not have this.

While this new proposal is to do something with existing technology, since a nuclear fission engine would be used, that is, splitting atoms and they have proposed using uranium, but how does this centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket work? These researchers from Ohio are based on using a nuclear fission reactor, the same thing that is now used in nuclear power plants, that is, splitting the atom and what that fission reactor would do is heat the liquid hydrogen propellant and it would do so at extremely high temperatures, instead of burning the fuel, what it would do is make the gas expand and then expel it through a nozzle generating thrust.

It is the centrifugal characteristic of the design, the problem is that this design implies that the reactor has a rotating liquid uranium core and therefore also the centrifugal force to keep the fuse material contained within the walls of the reactor. Advantages: One of the main advantages of this technology is its high performance, even so, it is complicated, even if it were 6 months of travel, it has to be working at full capacity that engine cannot fail or you take three engines in case one fails and you turn on the other, but in principle they have to work during the entire time of the mission, so you need something very very reliable, that is why high performance is essential.

Additionally, these nuclear heat engines can generate significantly greater thrust than liquid-fuel rockets, which we currently use. Disadvantages, the main one being that it uses uranium, a radioactive material, and containing the nuclear fuel in a liquid state and in rotation is a bit complicated.

In any case, Ohio researchers have declared themselves optimistic and hope that the concept will reach the design phase in the next 5 years, thus marking an important milestone for research.

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