HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 17 -- The notion of nuclear-powered vehicles launching into space is becoming increasingly realistic as NASA officials talk openly about nuclear rockets as the best way to get to the planets.
At the 36th annual Joint Propulsion Conference held here this week, two sessions and at least a dozen papers were devoted to space propulsion using nuclear thermal rockets (NTR). This type of propulsion is rooted in the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program that was terminated in 1973, seemingly with its coffin nailed shut.
"Maybe those nails haven't been completely pulled out," admitted Michael Stancati of SAIC in Schaumberg, Illinois. SAIC has supported NASA on a number of planetary mission studies. "But the thinking in the engineering community is that despite sporadic low levels of funding, NTR is the only credible option that makes sense for what we want to do."
It is a significant step forward since, for more than two decades after the demise of NERVA, NASA put very little money into space nuclear propulsion. Growing anti-nuclear feelings in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s did away with support for nuclear technology.
In recent years, the agency has also sought to avoid drawing attention to nuclear options; rather, it put a great deal of study into concepts for all-chemical and other propulsion schemes for sending humans to Mars. But several engineers have kept returning to the fact that the United States had once tested, on the ground, virtually all of the elements for a nuclear-propelled spacecraft.
NERVA was basically a graphite-core nuclear reactor with a liquid-hydrogen tank on one end and a rocket nozzle on the other. It also seemed to have a single purpose.
"Pigeonholing it for Mars led to its demise," said Stanley Borowski, a nuclear engineer managing NTR studies of NASA's Glenn Research Center since 1990 and co-chair of the sessions at the conference this week.
