Why Nuclear Rockets Are Going To Change Spaceflight

Nuclear Rocket Engines or more correctly Nuclear Thermal Rockets were seen as a key technological requirement for missions beyond the moon, and a lot of science and engineering effort was directed towards building a workable solution before the conclusion of the Space Race lead to the drawdown of funding for missions beyond Apollo. But the technology is back on the roadmap and is expected to be tested as soon as 2027 with the DRACO mission. So in this video I want to explain why nuclear rockets can beat chemical rockets and Ion engines for the right application, and talk about some of the unique engineering and mission planning problems that are associated with nuclear powered spaceflight.

Lots of credit for collecting the research goes to Beyond Nerva https://beyondnerva.com/ And of course to Atomic Rockets https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

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