NERVA had a greater thrust than the weight of the rocket, so could at least theoretically be turned into a ground launch system (probably after a few more iterations).
Nuclear ramjets were viable just before they were cancelled out of environmental and nuclear proliferation concerns. I'm fairly certain that a denser working fluid like nitrogen/oxygen creates a higher thrust than hydrogen, at the cost of having a lower specific impulse (ISP). So it should have been straightforward to build a final rocket that could use either. Maybe someone knows for sure?
Even as a tree hugging hippie in spirit, I'm saddened that we have hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world that may very well begin spilling more and more radiation into the oceans and air as our scientific wisdom declines under pressure from (insert dystopian endgame here: late stage capitalism/communism, austerity, fascism, what have you), but don't use nuclear power for scientific pursuits.
Also I'm a bit saddened that we never had nuclear launch systems, because they might have been a stepping stone to a microwave or laser rocket that used power transmitted from a ground station to run as an electric ramjet and transition to hydrogen in the upper atmosphere. To me, that's probably the only feasible way to reduce launch costs to something comparable to a space elevator.
> I'm saddened that we have hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world that may very well begin spilling more and more radiation into the oceans and air as our scientific wisdom declines under pressure from
To really do harm with nuclear reactors or waste from nuclear reactors you actually need to do a lot of stuff and once you shoot one down, doing nothing is a reasonable policy.
Seems to me its highly unlikely that we will ever see significant radiation impact on humans from current nuclear.
Sadly the destruction of nuclear has essentially slowed our whole civilization, we have never really jumped from becoming a chemical to an atomic society. Had nuclear energy won out we would have lots more research in applications for these technologies.
Nuclear trains, ships and rockets. Nuclear batteries. Medical isotopes. Materials
for medical diagnostic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#NERVA_rocket_stage_speci...
NERVA had a greater thrust than the weight of the rocket, so could at least theoretically be turned into a ground launch system (probably after a few more iterations).
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
Nuclear ramjets were viable just before they were cancelled out of environmental and nuclear proliferation concerns. I'm fairly certain that a denser working fluid like nitrogen/oxygen creates a higher thrust than hydrogen, at the cost of having a lower specific impulse (ISP). So it should have been straightforward to build a final rocket that could use either. Maybe someone knows for sure?
Even as a tree hugging hippie in spirit, I'm saddened that we have hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world that may very well begin spilling more and more radiation into the oceans and air as our scientific wisdom declines under pressure from (insert dystopian endgame here: late stage capitalism/communism, austerity, fascism, what have you), but don't use nuclear power for scientific pursuits.
Also I'm a bit saddened that we never had nuclear launch systems, because they might have been a stepping stone to a microwave or laser rocket that used power transmitted from a ground station to run as an electric ramjet and transition to hydrogen in the upper atmosphere. To me, that's probably the only feasible way to reduce launch costs to something comparable to a space elevator.