NERVA - in Fiction

In Fiction

• In the 1968 short story "Wait It Out", by Larry Niven, an ill-fated exploration mission to Pluto uses a landing craft with a NERVA engine.
• The 1970 novel The Throne of Saturn by Allen Drury describes a fictional Project Argosy, a mission to Mars consisting of three Saturn V vehicles, each with a NERVA upper stage. The NERVA stages and living modules are docked together for the trip.
• In the 1979 novel Encounter Three, by Martin Caidin, the NERVA program is briefly discussed. It is described as "pushing more thrust through a smaller hole", and is dismissed as useless in the long-term.
• In the 1985 film Lifeforce, the NERVA is the propulsion for the fictional space shuttle Churchill.
• In Stephen Baxter's 1996 alternate timeline novel Voyage the NERVA project is not canceled but development goes on throughout the 70s producing a test article Apollo-N in 1980. A disaster occurs, the NERVA technology is abandoned as unsafe, and a mission to Mars is launched using chemical rocket engines with a slingshot gravity assist via Venus allowing an expedition to arrive on Mars in 1986.
• In Chris Berman's 2008 novel, The Hive, the discovery of an alien device between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn in the year 2019 creates an emergency situation. This leads to a crash program with Russia and the United States partnering to re-engine a partly complete manned Mars spacecraft with a NERVA rocket motor to send a team to inspect the device.
• In Boundary by Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor (Baen Books), it makes an appearance, first in Chapter 7.