Gas Core Reactor Rocket
Gas core reactor rockets are a conceptual type of rocket that is propelled by the exhausted coolant of a gaseous fission reactor. The nuclear fission reactor core may be either a gas or plasma. They may be capable of creating specific impulses of 3,000–5,000 s (30 to 50 kN·s/kg, effective exhaust velocities 30 to 50 km/s) and thrust which is enough for relatively fast interplanetary travel. Heat transfer to the working fluid (propellant) is by thermal radiation, mostly in the ultraviolet, given off by the fission gas at a working temperature of around 25,000 °C.
Read more about Gas Core Reactor Rocket: Theory of Operation, General Features of The Nuclear Reactor, Open Cycle Versus Closed Cycle, Magnetic Confinement, Impact of Rocket Acceleration, Neutronic Considerations, Technology Summary and Outlook
Famous quotes containing the words gas, core and/or rocket:
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
“Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,
Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow.”
—Andrei Voznesensky (b. 1933)