Mar 062010
Earliest serious attempt at doing an engineering design of a nuclear rocket that I’ve come across is a 1947 North American Aviation study. This study included not only a NERVA-style nuclear thermal rocket but also a hydrogen-filled V-2-shaped launch vehicle capable of single-stage to orbit operations, and a two-stage nuclear ramjet vehicle (a predecessor to Project Pluto).
The nuclear rocket was not designed to the same level of detail as the later NERVA, and was in many details quite vague, but it is nevertheless quite obviously the ancestor of NERVA.
For more info on this engine and the other vehicles studied by NAA in 1947, be sure to check out issue V2N2 of Aerospace Projects Review.
2 Responses to “NERVA: 1947”
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Didn’t the BIS do a nuclear rocket engine study at around this time also?
The Germans looked into the possibilities of using nuclear fission energy for rocket propulsion during the war, but since they didn’t really have any specifics of how nuclear fission worked, they couldn’t actually design a nuclear rocket engine concept of any kind.
A note from November 11, 1944, from Peenemunde’s Col. Leo Zanssen to the German Post Office’s nuclear energy project:
“SECRET
To Research Station of the German Post Office
1. Carry out fundamental research on the increase in performance of liquid propulsion systems for rockets by the use of fuel mixtures of maximum energy content.
2. Investigate the possible exploitation of nuclear decay and chain reactions for rocket propulsion.”
American contractors got started as early as October 1945 on planning nuclear rockets. Here’s a 32-page summary of the NEPA program, Nuclear Energy Propulsion of Aircraft:
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=129218
The appendix to this document, penned by Robert Bussard, is “Nuclear Powered Rockets: A Historical Survey and Literature Summary.”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00339473.pdf
(I was pleased to find this because it shows that my man Robert Cornog did some rocket calculations while he was, all too briefly, at Northrop after the war. I’ve just published a biographical article about him; see http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/144546.html?thread=966562.)