X-SpaceX Raptor designer has ready for development designs for nuclear rocket

[GhostZ06]

John Bucknell created the pre-conceptual design for the SpaceX Raptor engine. It will be the advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine for the SpaceX BFR. He designed and built the subscale Raptor rocket for proof of concept testing able to test eighty-one configurations of main injector.

John Bucknell says the nuclear turbo rocket technology and his designs are ready for development. The air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket will enable 7 times more payload fraction to be delivered to low-earth orbit and it will have 6 times the ISP (rocket fuel efficiency) as chemical rockets. The rocket will have two to three times the speed and performance of chemical rockets for missions outside of the atmosphere.

The fully reusable nuclear rocket will be a single stage to orbit system which will be able to make space-based solar power several times cheaper than coal power. Using the 11-meter diameter version of this rocket to build space-based solar power will enable solar power at less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Besides being cheaper and vastly higher performing that the SpaceX BFR, the Bucknell Nuclear turbo rocket will to do things which the SpaceX BFR cannot.

Bucknell’s proposed air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket propulsion cycle called the Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket (NTTR) improves payload fraction to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by a factor of 5-7 relative to State of the Art chemical rockets.

Mission Average Specific Impulse: 1430 to 1788 sec (About 5-6 times better than 350-400 ISP chemical rockets)

The Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket (NTTR) is a supercharged air-augmented nuclear thermal combined cycle rocket architecture.

Nuclear turbo rockets already offer the highest Specific Impulse (Isp) of launch-capable pure rocket propulsion systems, whereas launch to hypersonic turbine combined cycle systems offer far higher Isp. The NTTR combines both modes.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/...t-that-will-be-2-7-times-better-than-bfr.html

 

[GhostZ06]

The best estimates indicate there is 18 billion tons of water on the Southern pole of the moon. It would best be harvested using microwaves.

A large ice harvesting machine could be delivered to the moon using a SpaceX BFR or Bucknells proposed air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket. The SpaceX BFR would need to have a refueling in high earth orbit.

Bucknell then describes the creation of a space station with most of the mass being water and ice. 89 trips of a nuclear thermal rocket could fill up a 2000 person space station.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/...2-ton-large-lunar-ice-harvesting-machine.html


i know the videos are long. Sorry about that guys, i wish there was shorter ones, but youll have to articles instead of one. The ice mining one is a bonus.

 

[Fugazy]

Man, I can't wait until one of those blow up shortly after launch and shower several cities with radioactive nuclear debris.

 

[LMP]

Man, I can't wait until one of those blow up shortly after launch and shower several cities with radioactive nuclear debris.

I think that the future for the human race is in the stars. What's a couple of cities compared to our future......

Really though other than for the waist. nuclear is fine.... until it's not.

 

[Prutfis]

Man, I can't wait until one of those blow up shortly after launch and shower several cities with radioactive nuclear debris.

My first thought as well. What happens when one of these go boom

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

Some old video about the concept, very interesting IMO

Man, I can't wait until one of those blow up shortly after launch and shower several cities with radioactive nuclear debris.

My first thought as well. What happens when one of these go boom

It's not that bad. Nuclear reactors produce extremely dangerous fission products after they start working but their original fuel is not that bad. If it uses U-235, for example, it's a toxic metal but with a half-life of 700 million years it's not very radioactive.
The reactor in the rocket would start working in space only, thus only generating fission products when it's very far away from Earth.

 

[superpunch]

NASA had a program back in the 1960s called Project Orion. It was a spacecraft propelled by atomic bomb explosions. It met all its goals, was on target for everything, was meeting cost projections, and was beating performance and scheduling expectations. We would have had a man on Mars in the mid 1970s and men to the outer solar system by the early 1980s. It would have been capable of reaching 50% of the speed of light.

Instead of that, we couldn't even send men into orbit a few years ago. Lmao.

They cancelled it for typical stupid politics reasons.

Here's a link to the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

 

[Prutfis]

Some old video about the concept, very interesting IMO





It's not that bad. Nuclear reactors produce extremely dangerous fission products after they start working but their original fuel is not that bad. If it uses U-235, for example, it's a toxic metal but with a half-life of 700 million years it's not very radioactive.
The reactor in the rocket would start working in space only, thus only generating fission products when it's very far away from Earth.

And when it comes back down?

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

And when it comes back down?

I think the fission products are expelled in space, no big deal there.

 

[superpunch]

That was totally achievable. Worse, the conventional space program obviously led to no great advancements useful for further space travel. Once we started building those things in that youtube video and sending men further and further, who knows what we would have discovered that would lead to more advancements for further space travel?

There's no reason that manned space travel had to have just stalled like it did. It's not just funding either. Conventional space travel could have been funded infinitely and it wasn't going anywhere great. No other major area of science and exploration just stalls like that. It's not normal and it shouldn't have happened.

There's a path somehow for mankind to reach the stars. I think that path of scientific research obviously isn't anything we did or have been doing. It was stuff like that youtube video you posted and the stuff in my last post.

 

[superpunch]

double post

 

[Prutfis]

I think the fission products are expelled in space, no big deal there.

More space junk and now of the radioactive variety? Doesn't sound so great.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

That was totally achievable. Worse, the conventional space program obviously led to no great advancements useful for further space travel. Once we started building those things in that youtube video and sending men further and further, who knows what we would have discovered that would lead to more advancements for further space travel?

There's no reason that manned space travel had to have just stalled like it did. It's not just funding either. Conventional space travel could have been funded infinitely and it wasn't going anywhere great. No other major area of science and exploration just stalls like that. It's not normal and it shouldn't have happened.

There's a path somehow for mankind to reach the stars. I think that path of scientific research obviously isn't anything we did or have been doing. It was stuff like that youtube video you posted and the stuff in my last post.

I think it didn't progress for political reasons and bad choices. Like the Space Shuttle, what a stupid idea.

 

[superpunch]

I think it didn't progress for political reasons and bad choices. Like the Space Shuttle, what a stupid idea.

The nerds at NASA are to blame too. They put all their focus, energy, and funding into projects like sending the tenth robot to orbit some moon to find out some obscure fact about a gas in the atmosphere. They all get an over-the-top focus on their own small part of research and thinking that making an advancement there with a robot is making a great advancement overall to the point that they've lied to themselves that manned exploration isn't even an advancement at all. They lost sight of the bigger picture and just splintered into a 100 small groups of nerds seeking to advance their niche area of PhD research or whatever. Trump may know nothing about space travel but maybe they need some bombastic guy to just say "FUCK IT WERE GOING TO MARS AND WERE HAVING A FUCKING SPACE FORCE." and then things just might get into motion . Our space program needs a one-goal oriented guy like Steve Jobs who can see how everything fits together into the bigger picture and not just have the program doing 100 different individually cool but collectively non-coherent missions.

 

[The ScorpioN]

That's amazing.

Absolutely brilliant people.

I'd support a tax hike to fund these programs.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

Man, I can't wait until one of those blow up shortly after launch and shower several cities with radioactive nuclear debris.

Russians used nuclear battery in their satellites before coming around to solar power -- several of them blew up causing fallout.

 

[GhostZ06]

That's amazing.

Absolutely brilliant people.

I'd support a tax hike to fund these programs.

fuck id support cuts to move fund to nasa for this. We need to get our asses on the moon an set up something perminit for the good of the american people.

 

[GhostZ06]

@The ScorpioN

this is for you.

 

[superpunch]

That's amazing.

Absolutely brilliant people.

I'd support a tax hike to fund these programs.

These programs were scheduled and on track to be completed in the 1960s, having us on Mars in the mid 1970s and manned missions to the outer solar system in the early 1980s. Our space program is such an embarrassment. What could have been?

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

It's good that he's working on something we have already that we don't really need