Anatoly Perminov, Russia’s space chief, in a replay of the early 1960’s NASA Orion Project, proposes building a nuclear-powered ship with a megawatt-class nuclear reactor at a government meeting Wednesday but didn’t explain its purpose. President Dmitry Medvedev backed the project and urged the government to find the money.
The 1960s Project Orion project was a nuclear-pulse rocket the size of the Empire State building fueled by atomic bombs with the power to destroy half of Planet Earth. The mission was to take us to Saturn in five years. The project lives today in limbo at NASA possibly to be activated should an asteroid arrive with our name on it.
The propulsion system advocated for the Orion spacecraft was based on an idea first put forward by Stanislaw Ulam and Cornelius Everett in a classified paper in 1955. Ulam and Everett suggested releasing atomic bombs behind a spacecraft, followed by disks made of solid propellant. The bombs would explode, vaporizing the material of the disks and converting it into hot plasma. As this plasma rushed out in all directions, some of it would catch up with the spacecraft, impinge upon a pusher plate, and so drive the vehicle forward.
Fast forward to Moscow, 2009: Perminov said the nuclear spaceship should be used for human flights to Mars and other planets. He said the project is challenging technologically, but could capitalize on the Soviet and Russian experience in the field, with a preliminary design ready by 2012.
“The project is aimed at implementing large-scale space exploration programs, including a manned mission to Mars, interplanetary travel, the creation and operation of planetary outposts,” Perminov’s Web statement said. Associated Press reports that “the ambitious plans contrast with Russia’s slow progress on building a replacement to its mainstay spacecraft - the Soyuz.
Russia is using Soyuz booster rockets and capsules, developed 40 years ago, to send crews to the International Space Station.”
Despite its continuing reliance on the old technology, Russia stands to take a greater role in space exploration in the coming years. NASA’s plan to retire its shuttle fleet next year will force the United States and other nations to rely on the Russian spacecraft to ferry their astronauts to and from the International Space Station until NASA’s new manned ship becomes available.
Igor Lisov, a Moscow-based expert on Russian space program, said the prospective ship would use a nuclear reactor to run an electric rocket engine. “It will be quite efficient for flight to Mars,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday. Lisov said Soviet work on a nuclear-powered electric rocket engine dates back to the 1960s when Soviet engineers began developing plans for a manned flight to Mars.
Stanley Borowski, a senior engineer at NASA specializing in nuclear rocket engines, said they have many advantages for deep space missions, such as to take astronauts and gear to Mars. In deep space, nuclear rockets are twice as fuel-efficient as conventional rockets, he said.
NASA has used small amounts of plutonium in deep space probes, including those to Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto and heading out of the solar system.
The only planetary mission currently considered by Russia is a plan to send a probe to one of Mars’ twin moons, Phobos. It was set to launch this year, but was delayed.
Casey Kazan
Sources: Associated Press and Physorg.com
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