Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Deep Space. Nuclear rocket enthusiasts are not really satisfied with an engine that works in so simple a way. They are already dreaming of more sophisticated schemes for long-distance flights. One of these is an engine whose nuclear fuel is a uranium-rich gas mixed with the hydrogen propellant. When the nuclear reaction starts, both gases will get hot and blast out of the nozzle. This would produce a magnificent short-duration thrust, but the wasted uranium would cost something like $150 million per takeoff. The way around this little difficulty would be some system to keep the heavy...
Since the efficiency of a rocket engine depends largely on its exhaust velocity, the nuclear engine has a big initial advantage, but it has to pay a high price. The engine itself, which must be cooled elaborately by the liquid hydrogen, will be about as complicated as a conventional chemical engine (see diagram). Its controls will be even more complicated, and all its delicate parts will have to perform perfectly in spite of intense gamma rays striking through them at takeoff...
...that it will run very hot, and will be kept from flashing into vapor only by the stream of liquid hydrogen forced rapidly through it. On the other hand, the core need work for only a few minutes. By that time the propellant will have been exhausted, and the rocket will be on its way into deep space...
Another possibility is a rocket engine that uses nuclear fusion of heavy hydrogen instead of fission of uranium. No controlled fusion reactor has yet been constructed for any purpose, and making a light one for rockets will be much harder than making a heavy one for power stations. But the nuclear enthusiasts are not discouraged. Deuterium is cheap, they say, and even if the entire stock were shot out of the nozzle, the fuel for a flight would cost only...
...exert a small thrust for a long time. Several nuclear systems look good for this purpose. A small stream of propellant could be heated by an electric arc, shooting out of the nozzle at very great speed. Or the propellant could be ionized and shot away from the rocket by electrical repulsion. The thrust of this system would be extremely low, but it would use little material. Ten Ibs. of thrust working for 1.5 years would speed a 50-ton spaceship to 135,000 m.p.h. At the end of this time it would have covered one billion miles, or beyond...