New Mars Forums

dredge

InActive

From: Texas

Registered: 2003-02-02

Posts: 2

Re: Nuclear Rockets - Question

Hi

Would nuclear rockets be used in the Earth's atmosphere to get to orbit, or would they be used soley for travel in space?  Either way, I'm really excited to hear that Bush will support their development.

Thanks!

dredge

Mark Friedenbach

Member

From: Mountain View, CA

Registered: 2003-01-31

Posts: 325

Re: Nuclear Rockets - Question

The prometheus program will create new nuclear reactors for use in space, not engines.  These reactors can (will) be hooked into existing ion engines to give them greater range since solar panels are quite useless in the outer solar system, but no new engine technology will be developed as far as I know.  So no, ground launch technology will be unaffected.

BTW: this should go in the Science and Technology forum.

Adrian

Moderator

From: London, United Kingdom

Registered: 2001-09-04

Posts: 642

Website

Re: Nuclear Rockets - Question

Moved to Sci-Tech. Can we *please* start putting posts in the correct forums?

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Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]

TJohn

Banned

Registered: 2002-08-06

Posts: 149

Re: Nuclear Rockets - Question

Does anybody know anything about the Liberty Ship?

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One day...we will get to Mars and the rest of the galaxy!!  Hopefully it will be by Nuclear power!!!

soph

Member

Registered: 2002-11-24

Posts: 1,492

Re: Nuclear Rockets - Question

Yup, mauk2's concept is very nice.  GCNR's would be nice, too, if we could take them off the drawing board and into production!