NASA and DARPA will work together to develop and demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space by 2027. The Demonstration Rocket is part of the Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) programme. DRACO’s proposed solid core nuclear thermal rocket temperatures could reach almost 5000 degrees fahrenheit, which will need new advanced materials. It will use high-assay …
Benjamin Jorns, U-M associate professor of aerospace engineering led a new Hall thruster study that operated a Hall Plasma thruster at five times old power limits. His team challenged ran a 9 kilowatt-rated Hall thruster at up to 45 kilowatts while maintaining roughly 80% of its nominal efficiency. This increased the amount of force generated …
Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) is one of the best options for manned missions throughout the solar system with over double the ISP of chemical rockets. A new NASA NIAC study will look at improved nuclear propulsion with a Wave Rotor combined with Nuclear Electric. This could enable four times the ISP of nuclear thermal and …
Angry Astronaut made a video based off of my (and Centauri Dreams) Avatar’s Antimatter rocket which is based off an actual scientifically sound design. The Second Avatar movie passed $2 billion in box office this weekend. The movie will likely pass Titanic for third highest box office. This will only be behind the first Avatar …
The Second Avatar movie will surpass $2 billion in box office. The start of the first Avatar movie showed the Valkyrie Antimatter rocket design. This was an actual antimatter rocket design. The first Avatar movie made almost $3 billion in box office. The second movie should be able to reach $2.5 billion and could go …
NASA NIAC phase 1 studies development of a nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE) that is exponentially more propellent efficient than rocket engines currently used to power today’s space vehicles and could achieve very high specific impulse (>100,000 sec) at high power density (>kW/kg). Fission Fragment rockets are several proposed nuclear rocket designs made since …
NASA NIAC has a phase 1 study for Artur Davoyan to study propulsion architecture for fast transit of heavy (1 ton and more) payloads across the solar system and to interstellar medium. This version of a pellet beams approach allow for larger vehicles to reach speeds nine times faster than Voyager 1. Inspired by the …
Aerographite exists as seen in the petri dish from over two years ago. It is 15000 times lighter than aluminum and making 1 micron pellets and releasing them from where we have already sent the Parker solar mission near the sun they would reach over 2% of lightspeed. A steady stream of these small pellets …
Jeff Greason’s provides his fastest summary of leveraging the solar wind, pellet riding and Q drive to reach 24% of the speed of light. Q drive uses the solar wind as a power source to accelerate reaction mass. This can take 25% of the mass of the vehicle to go 4 times faster. Simply using …
The Jupiter Observing Velocity Experiment (JOVE) is a solar-powered technology demonstration of rapid flight to outer solar system targets, performing a flyby of the Jovian magnetosphere 30 days after launch. This is achieved using a magnetic drag device to accelerate with the solar wind plasma. This “Wind Rider” propulsion system can potentially also decelerate against …
New research indicates that tens to hundreds of planet-sized nomadic worlds may populate the spherical volume centered on Earth and circumscribed by Proxima Centauri, and thus may comprise closer interstellar targets than any stellar planetary system. For the first time, there is systematic analysis of the feasibility of exploring these unbounded celestial bodies via deep …