Awesome Astronomy - NASA's Going Nuclear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCqg3NIwbHE


Hosted by Ralph Wilkins.


From Feb 3, 2023.


Nuclear powered rockets are about to become a reality opening up
space travel for humanity. Ever since the dawn of nuclear weapons
and reactors, advanced militaries and space agencies have dreamt
of powering rockets with long lasting energy efficient nuclear
fuel.


 


The Soviet Union and United States ran a number of programs to
develop nuclear propulsive power for human spaceflight. Deep
space robotic spacecraft, lunar and Mars rovers have all been
powered by 'nuclear batteries' in the past - as have experiments
that the Apollo astronauts took to the moon - but no nuclear
rocket engines have been tested, let alone flown, in space. That
is about to change with a NASA/DARPA collaboration to do just
that in the hope of cutting the time to travel to Mars by more
than half.


 


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