Question by : Can you you control a nuclear fission reaction to power a spacecraft?
Is it possible to contain a nuclear fission reaction (or better yet, fusion reaction) and direct the thrust from the reaction out the back of a spaceship in order to power it at 0.5 G’s?
Best answer:
Answer by Starrysky
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/teacher/lessons/contributed/thomas/Adv.prop/advprop.html for NERVA atomic rocket engine, others. Pretty scary if it pollutes or goes wild.
There are plans to use nuclear engines for low thrust for a very long time on space probes. An early ion rocket has been employed on a comet probe. But to achieve 0.5G will take much more mass and shielding than has been attempted or even planned so far.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
3 Responses
They already do that on submarines. Have you ever heard of nuclear powered submarines? These are subs which gain their power from small nuclear reactors on the sub which fission Uranium. I don’t think this would be very applicable to spacecraft though. In a sub, the reactor supplies electrical energy as an end result. That electrical energy is used to spin propellers which push against the water, thus moving the sub. In space though, there is nothing to push off of, so you have to supply your own material to push against. The thing is, nuclear reactors don’t have thrust. All they do is supply energy. There is nothing from a nuclear reactor which can be ejected out of the spacecraft as a means of thrust. You could use it to power the operations of the spacecraft, but being that you’re in space, solar panels are a much better and safer way to do that. So I don’t think putting nuclear reactors on a spacecraft is a viable method of power or transportation
As for fusion, we haven’t even managed to do that on earth yet. And even if we do, it requires vast amounts of energy to maintain and enormous machinery. Certainly nothing we could ever fit on a spacecraft. Maybe someday we’ll be able to advance fusion technology enough to fit on a spacecraft, but as of now, we’re still at the stage where we haven’t yet fused anything.
there is no way to “direct the thrust from nuclear reaction”. Nuclear reactors and power planets use the HEAT from nuclear reactions to boil water to produce steam, under pressure, to turn turbines to produce electricity. We have NO WAY to “harness nuclear power”… that’s a myth. We just use the heat, the “thermal energy” produced, to convert something to convert something to convert something into electricity.
Nuclear subs are easy, you’re just using the spinning turbine to spin the propeller… in a spaceship, you need “thrust”…. you could eject the superheated steam, but then your water supply becomes your “fuel supply” as well. Sorry, “nuclear spaceships” make as much sense as lead ballons
Here is something you could look into. It’s called nuclear pulse propulsion. There are a few variants of the idea, but all seem to rely on nuclear explosions to generate thrust. Some of the ideas are quite interesting.