Science
New Nuclear-powered Spaceship Design Revealed
An innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months!) and enable our spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling.
The original Orion project was headed by Ted Taylor from General Atomics, who together with the famous physicist Freeman Dyson suggested ejecting nuclear explosives behind a spacecraft in order to propel it forward. The Mini-Mag system uses a magnetic field in order to trigger an explosion of compressed material in the form of small pellets weighing several grams. This explosion, although being significantly weaker than a nuclear explosion, creates plasma that is directed through a magnetic nozzle to generate vehicle thrust. The proposed technology enables the production of thrust at high efficiency, hopefully allowing drastic reduction of interplanetary travel time. According to calculations performed by AS&T, this type of propulsion system can produce the same thrust as the Space Shuttle Main Engine, with 50 times more efficiency.
Due to the magnetic compression thrust technology, spacecrafts could be smaller and less heavy. In the framework of their research into the subject, the scientists conducted an experiment that tested the process of compressing a simulated fissile material in a magnetic field.
The MMO study has been funded by the NASA Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and was conducted in cooperation with Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Washington’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
In 2006, TFOT covered a different revolutionary space propulsion technology developed by the Santa Fe Positronics Research Company. The company also worked with NASA on a concept for an anti matter engine, which uses positrons (anti-electrons) as a fuel that will enable a spaceship to reach Mars faster than any known conventional propulsion technology.
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