Sep 102009
One of the (many) great political failures of the last half century was the cancellation of the NERVA nuclear rocket. While not as downright impressive as the Orion nuclear pulse propulsion system, nuclear thermal rockets nevertheless would have been fabulously useful propulsion systems, especially for Mars and NEO cargo transport. And unlike Orion, NERVA engines were tested full-scale on the test stand. Problems remained, but development was progressing.
Below are two images from a NASA report to Congress. Additionally, HERE is a very nice cutaway painting.
3 Responses to “NERVA”
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DUMBO was better … but opened up the ability to Launch from the Surface and left all that radioactive effluent in the ground level air and water.
Still, take the DUMBO reactor design and move it over to ships and subs … would have made the reactor and shielded comapartment that much insanely smaller without dropping power. Would have made for much more capable warships … not that MacNamara or Kissinger wanted that. Too far ahaed and the Reds would have said “fuckit, shoot while we can and salvage maybe 10% of our populations”.
[…] to later nuclear stages, the S-N stage was remarkably short in length. Long stage lengths were useful to […]
Very interesting. Do you have the full dimensions of the stage in the second picture? I am assuming that NERVA 2 is the same as the reactor tested under the name Phoebus-2?