NERVA nuclear rocket stage, TMI and Tchernobyl

Archibald

Banned
Let's suppose that NASA keep on developing the Nerva 1 and Nerva 2 nuclear thermal rocket stage after 1973 (instead of cancelling it).

The engines would be ready near the end of the 70's right ?

How would Three Mile Island and Tchernobyl nuclear accident affect the program ? Any idea ?

would it be automatically cancelled because of public fears of nuclear power ?
 
Nuclear reactors are hard things to make move because the shielding for them not to kill their operators in minutes is heavy stuff.

TMI wasn't as serious a problem as it could have been - but public fears over it blew the problems way out of proportion. That is a mistake that the US probably wishes now they hadn't made.
 
Well with either nuclear system fully oerational, & given the technology would have been developed to deal with the radiation, mankind would be exploring our solar system at first hand by now. Mars would have been visited, maybe even a small scientific colony established, likewise the Moon would have a base or two on it. Furthemore other expeditions would have ventured out towards Jupiter & Saturn where they may find a monolith or two...
 
NERVA's no good for getting from surface to orbit-its thrust is too low to actually lift itself off the ground. As such, even if we had NERVA, without some other change it won't have much effect: the bottleneck in space transport isn't moving around once you're in space, it's getting there in the first place. Being optimistic, maybe we'd have gotten something like the OTV, only nuclear-powered. That would get you some really sweet unmanned missions, and it would put us in a better position to send manned missions to different places, but without further changes (i.e., more money), it won't make much difference to the manned program.

There was a related program, called DUMBO, that had a hybrid nuclear-chemical system that was high-thrust enough for a launch vehicle. It was cancelled, allegedly because NASA knew that getting a nuclear space drive would be hard enough without trying to run it inside the atmosphere. I don't know much about the project, I'm afraid, so I don't know if it was at all viable or cost-effective. But if you want to get a Heinlein-esque Space Program out of an ATL without ASBs, nuclear launch is the way to do it. Chemical rockets don't have the exhaust velocity, even today; Orion is insane; and all the other interesting possibilities, like space elevators, require tech that we don't have even now.

(Except for maybe beamed power, but I don't know anything about that, so I can't say).
 
NERVA engine was design for Upper stage like Saturn V third stage.
never as First stage engine

had NASA keep on developing the NERVA (for Mars manned Flight)
the first Test flight RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test) around 1975-1976
a Saturn V with S-IVN ?

but with Three Mile Island accident 1979
Congress & Senat and groups like Greenpeace
will question the safety of Launching NERVA

NASA can show the 100% Launch record of Saturn V
and build better safety system for NERVA in case of launch failure.

for Mars manned Flight program the first flight take place in 1980-1982
with Manned Mars Landing in 1984-1986 period

after Tchernobyl nuclear accident 1986
Congress & Senat and groups like Greenpeace will scream:
"SHOT DOWN THE PROGRAM !!! "
on that point the Mars Landing has taken place
but next Mission can be chanceld by Congress & Senat in 1986!

wat have NERVA Engine and type RBMK-1000 (like in Tchernobyl) equal ?

Postive Neutron flux
means the reactors has to start up fast, so need more Neutrons for chain reaction
but the Nuclear fission can get out of control (see out of controll restart of RBMK-1000 in Tchernobyl)

it very likey that next to Three Mile Island and Tchernobyl accident also a NERVA accident in orbit
 

Archibald

Banned
a Nerva accident ? Seems Stephen Baxter imagined this in his book "Voyage" with astronauts dying of radiation poisoning.

Yes Nerva was planned for space applications.
It was to be fitted into a heavy stage (248 metric tons!) dubbed the "Primary Propulsion Module".
To lift that in space heavier Saturn V were planned with lots of SRBs (120 or 156 inch).

Never realised that there's potential for a Challenger+Tchernobyl accident : a SRB fail at take off and the Nerva/ Saturn V goes out of control, the NERVA is destroyed and nuclear fallout follow. :eek:

So it seems the only way of calming down opinion would be to use NERVA (or at least small-scale variants of it) on unmanned probes first. Combine this with high reliability of Saturn.

But even a very small incident would kill the program instantly...
 
Outside of space historian circles its little known USSR had several RTG powered sats power modules reenter and spread fallout in atmosphere. Public opinion is based on media exposition of events, not of their seriousness.
 

Thande

Donor
Outside of space historian circles its little known USSR had several RTG powered sats power modules reenter and spread fallout in atmosphere. Public opinion is based on media exposition of events, not of their seriousness.

Just so. See my note about Galileo on the other space thread.
 

Archibald

Banned
No Three Mile Island. You went from Time Magazine proclaiming breeder reactors to be the wave of the future, to it having "No Nukes" on the cover.

from what I've understand, the release of this (crap) movie "the chinese syndroma" just before TMI didn't helped, too :mad: What a bizarre coincidence...

We have to develop this POD...
 
the major problem with anti Nuke Movement is Greenpeace

he origins of Greenpeace lie in the peace movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament generally,
Taking its name from a slogan used during protests against United States nuclear testing in late 1969, the Committee had come together with the objective of stopping a U.S. nuclear bomb test codenamed Cannikin beneath the Aleutian island of Amchitka, Alaska.

after that Greenpeace start a Propaganda war against nuclear weapon and energy

so wat about a genernal nuclear bomb test stop in 1963 ?


by the way i found that France proposed 1968 a NERVA like engine for third-stages for Europa Rocket :eek:
http://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1963/1963 - 0921.pdf
http://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1963/1963 - 0922.pdf

for those who not know, the Europa Rocket never made in to Orbit, all Test flight were failure.
 
Outside of space historian circles its little known USSR had several RTG powered sats power modules reenter and spread fallout in atmosphere. Public opinion is based on media exposition of events, not of their seriousness.

A fully-critical nuclear reactor blowing up on launch is going to be a bit different from an RTG reentering the atmosphere. The fissionables will be of higher purity, and there's going to be a lot more of them.

Also, you can only use the NERVA as the upper stage of a Saturn-V if you keep the Saturn-V program from being cancelled. Like I said, you need more changes than just keeping NERVA funded if you want this to work.

You get a better result for less effort if you replace the original MISS program in the 50s with some sort of NTR project. That's how I'd do a Wonderful Space History, anyway.
 
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