The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: mystery-ak on May 26, 2021, 06:48:12 pm
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Russia to launch nuclear-powered spaceship to the moon, on to Venus, then Jupiter
The mission for the first nuclear-powered spaceship to potentially ascend the heavens is named for the ancient Roman god of sky and thunder: Zeus.
By
Anagha Srikanth | May 26, 2021
Story at a glance
Russia is building a nuclear-powered transport and energy module to move large cargo in deep space.
The first flight is scheduled for 2030 and will last 50 months, as the spacecraft travels from the moon to Venus and then Jupiter.
NASA is also exploring nuclear propulsion systems for spacecraft in future missions to Mars.
More than half a century after NASA successfully sent the world's first nuclear reactor into orbit, Russia is moving forward with plans to launch a nuclear-powered spaceship into space.
It'll take quite the spacecraft to travel from the Moon to Venus and then Jupiter over 50 months in deep space. Russia's space agency thinks their nuclear-powered transport and energy module will do it in 2030, reported TASS, the Russian News Agency.
"Together with the Russian Academy of Sciences, we are now making calculations about this flight’s ballistics and payload," Roscosmos Executive Director for Long-Term Programs and Science Alexander Bloshenko told reporters, according to TASS.
more
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/555560-russia-to-launch-nuclear-powered-spaceship-to-the
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A fission thermal hydrogen rocket uses fission to heat hydrogen propellant. It
has a higher exhaust speed than chemical rockets (13 km/s vs. 4.4 km/s). It is in the sweet spot between chemical rockets and electric rockets (see the plot).
Rocket type Exhaust speed (km/s)
Nuclear: Fission thermal hydrogen 13
Chemical: Hydrogen + Oxygen 4.4
Chemical: Methane + Oxygen 3.7
Chemical: Kerosene + Oxygen 3.3
Chemical: Solid fuel 2.7
Hydrogen is used for its low mass. The lower the mass of the propellant molecule, the higher the
exhaust speed.
Exhaust speed is determined by temperature. For a temperature of 2750 Kelvin, the speed of monatomic
hydrogen propellant is 13 km/s.
Fission thermal rockets are easy to design. Baffling that we don't already have them.
A fission electric uses fission to produce electricity, and it uses electricity to propel ions. The power/mass of an electric rocket is limited by cooling to 200 Watts/kg, which is too feeble to move large stuff around. It's good only for small spacecraft on long-term missions.
A fission thermal rocket can achieve a higher power/mass because it uses hydrogen exhaust for cooling.
Fission-thermal rockets are for deep space. They don't have enough power/mass for launch, or to use the Oberth maneuver. Only chemical rockets have sufficient power/mass.
https://www.jaymaron.com/astronautics.html#thermal
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More Russian vaporware. They have neither the money or the heavy lift boosters to get the components into LEO.
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The US doesn't have fission-propelled spacecraft because:
1 - R&D costs = huge.
2 - it would be a engine in search of a mission.
3 - The era of huge non-military space budgets is passing. Maybe that will change with commercial exploitation of the moon.
4 - The Rodent Wacko Looney Brigade has a true hissy fit if NASA launches a mission with a simple RTG installed. The last time they predicted that the entire human race could die if the mission's RTG was burned up in atmosphere in an accident. Which is utter nonsense. But imagine what those treasonous retards would say if NASA tried to launch a functional reactor now?
5 - But mostly, it's nearly impossible to test nuclear propulsions systems on earth's surface. And the more expensive the mission, the more comprehensive the testing. There's no way any moral country could launch such a spacecraft without a full-up captive test of the propulsion system. And that would almost certainly violate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaties.
Here's the question:
Has Russia signed such treaties in it's short history? As y'all will recall, the US ditched the ABM treaty because the other signatory nation to that treaty NO LONGER EXISTED. That nation was the USSR. Not "Russia". So Russia could easily claim, today, that it didn't sign any such treaty. I do not know the status of Russia's participation in modern non-proliferation and test ban treaties since the demise of the Soviet Union.
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Yeah, also remember that the NERVA proposals in the early 780's would have required several Saturn 5 launches just to get one functional nuclear thermal
powered spacecraft into LEO. Once the final optimized NERVA was built, the weight would have required the reactor to be launched by one S5, the fuel bundles by another, and then several more to get the liquid hydrogen up there.
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Or we could launch it in one piece on an Orion. Launch it from Portland, OR.
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Or we could launch it in one piece on an Orion. Launch it from Portland, OR.
Orion is a spacecraft (capsule). If you mean the SLS, its just a matter of time before that rocket is scrapped.
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Orion is a spacecraft (capsule). If you mean the SLS, its just a matter of time before that rocket is scrapped.
That is not the Orion he was referring to. This Orion is a neat concept for getting super heavy payloads into space by using nuclear explosions underneath a huge steel plate to lift.
https://www.oriondrive.com/
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That is not the Orion he was referring to. This Orion is a neat concept for getting super heavy payloads into space by using nuclear explosions underneath a huge steel plate to lift.
https://www.oriondrive.com/
Yup.
Also how the Earth was saved in the Niven-Pournelle novel "Footfall".
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Yup.
Also how the Earth was saved in the Niven-Pournelle novel "Footfall".
My favorite by those two......