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Spaceship Engines
Nuclear Rocket Engine Testing Why is it that NASA is still working on improving solid rocket motors, instead of pursuing other types of propulsion? One little known fact was that before the Saturn V rocket was finalized, NASA was considering a nuclear engine for some of the rocket sections. A nuclear thermal rocket usually depends on hydrogen being heated to a very high temperature by a nuclear reactor. The hydrogen is then sent through a nozzle, where it expands to create thrust. One of the great advantages is that the nuclear powered rocket is only about half the weight of the chemical rocket, yet the payload can be triple. Plans were being considered for nuclear rockets to take astronauts to Mars and power space tugs, an entire fleet of them. They would have been used to ferry payloads from low orbit to higher orbits and also to take the payloads to the other planets and the moon. It is said that we performed extensive testing of these nuclear rockets, which by the way could have been one stage instead of mufti-stage rockets, making the rockets less complicated in some ways. The fuel would have also lasted much longer. The Soviets also considered using nuclear motors, but supposedly never did it either. The U.S. Had Project Rover and the NERVA program and they ran from 1959 through 1973. The Soviets had the RD-0410 nuclear rocket that they tested. As the U.S. testing went forward more advanced nuclear motors were developed culminating in the Pewee 2, before the testing was stopped. I think that my readers are all intelligent people, so I would like to ask this question, if the government had a successful nuclear rocket testing program where better and better nuclear rockets were developed and extensive plans were drawn up for fleets of these things and then we were told that suddenly all the testing was stopped, could it have been possible that this all continued as a black operation and that we now have fleets of these ships out in space? Another concept that is being experimented with is the railgun, which can be used to launch vehicles easily off the surface of the moon into orbit. Since the moon has much less gravity than the earth. The gravity on the moon is only 1/6th that of earth. Here is the question, can the railgun be improved to the point where it can launch a vehicle off of the earth and into orbit? Since the railgun is an electromagnetic device we also have to consider the Coilgun. The Coilgun uses a magnetic field generated by external coils that are arranged along the barrel that accelerate a magnetic projectile. The problem is that these things need a lot of power, so some sort of super generator would have to be developed. Have we done that yet? There is no hint that we have, but it could have been kept a secret. Both of these devices would only be good for the launch into orbit and not to power the ship itself, once it was already in orbit. Since I am referring to launch equipment I guess that I have to mention the Slingatron. It is a giant hyper-velocity, rapid-fire slingshot. It is sort of a very long spiral-shaped tube that an object travels down from the force of gravity and this makes the object move faster and faster until it hits the velocity to launch into orbit. This concept is being studied as you read this.
Solar Sail Many different systems have been investigated for use as propulsion for spacecraft. Some seem to reflect ancient techniques like the solar sail. This is a system where a giant sail is used to capture the solar wind, much as a sail is used on a ship. Steering would require you to tilt the sail. This seems like a step backward, but it would propel you faster than a chemical rocket, and your craft wouldn't require fuel. To me, this would make a good emergency system to return to earth after an engine failure if you were close enough. The new improved Ion engine is said to be so efficient that it would be fast enough for all solar system travel. Its problem is that outside of space it is far too weak to launch anything. A secondary consideration is that this engine has to build up speed, but the newer Ion engine is said to do this much quicker than the old one. A new type of space propulsion engine was being studied in 1999. It was called the Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion. The idea was to build a spacecraft that can leave the solar system. The system used a plasma chamber the size of a large jar. A magnetized plasma is created by solar cells and solenoid coils. This creates a electromagnetic field around the craft that extends for about 12 miles in radius around the ship. The solar wind will then drag the field and thus the craft. It is said that this will allow a craft to travel about 10 times faster than current spacecraft and probes. The project was known as M2P2. This brings a thought to mind, what is the real difference between this and a solar sail, since both depend on the solar wind for propulsion? By the way the speed of the solar wind can hit 1.8 million miles per hour.
Project Orion Science is still thinking about matter and anti-matter annihilation for propulsion. The problem is that we can not produce anywhere near enough anti-mater to even test this in a spacecraft. They did think about a substitute however and this was a craft that would set off nuclear bombs that would propel it. This was part of Project Orion. This idea dates all the way back to 1947 and has to be one of the worst ideas ever put forward. It wasn't until 1958 that the project was started. At first it was even proposed that the craft should launch from earth by exploding a nuclear bomb, but that was later changed. I guess someone figured that people might eventually get angry about being irradiated.
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