Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Enhancements To Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Rockets, Kimberly Gonzalez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nuclear thermal rocket propulsion has been proposed as a highly efficient technology for space vehicles traveling from earth orbit to the moon, Mars, and other locations in the solar system. With twice the performance of a chemical rocket, nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) uses the thrust produced by heating hydrogen gas within a thermal nuclear reactor where the exhaust is then passed through a de Laval nozzle to produce supersonic flow. NTP engines were the subject ofthe NERVA experiments at the Nevada Test Site in the 1970’s, and they produced a specific impulse of up to 900 seconds which is almost …