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Nuclear ion drive ships (links)
Hello All,
A physicist I know of, Andrew LePage, wrote an article, which includes a video (see: http://www.drewexmachina.com/2015/0...actor-in-orbit/ ), about the only—so far—U.S. nuclear reactor to fly in space (he also included material on JPL [the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory] designs for nuclear ion drive deep space probes). The 1965 Snapshot mission involved the SNAP-10A reactor, which powered onboard instruments and a small cesium-fueled ion engine. While the ion thruster had some troubles, other cesium-fueled ion thrusters have been flown and operated successfully in space (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tric_propulsion ). While cesium is not the most pleasant propellant to work with, its high specific impulse (ISP) enables only small amounts of it to be necessary even for long thrusting durations, and: The June 1984 issue of “Popular Science” magazine had a four-page article—which began on page 83 (see: http://books.google.com/books?id=mQ...20probe&f=false )—about a proposed JPL/Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear ion drive Neptune orbiter/probe spacecraft, whose reactor resembled the SNAP-10A but was more powerful. Its 16 ion engines were mercury-fueled units.
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