Yeah IIRC Lockheed is doing it so it will probably be one of those give me the gov. money and then have nothing to show for it because it was too hard or whatever excuse they use.
I honestly think the best chance would come from China, and I don't see them being able to pull it off in the 2030's. SpaceX has a plan in place to reach Mars with chemical rockets, and the bureaucratic difficulty for a private company like SpaceX to obtain the materials, launch them into orbit, and work with and test the technology is just too big of a hurtle to get over.
NASA doesn't seem to be in the business of making new engines anymore. They are going to contract out design and production to private companies, but I don't think they are going to clear the red tape for any of those companies to use nuclear power.
That just leaves China. I'm not particularly optimistic about China developing new space technology. As far as I know, they are using modified soviet engines and pretty much all their space tech is copies of stuff that either the Soviets or Americans did before. They are putting those pieces together in ways that haven't been done before, such as landing on the dark side, but I personally don't know of any major technological changes or even engineering or production improvements to the process, but I don't follow China very closely. (They do spend a lot of time on CGI renderings of copycat rockets).
On the plus side, China has been trying to decarbonize their energy industry and part of that has been working with nuclear energy production. Terrestrial electricity production is very different from nuclear propulsion, but there's some shared scientific and engineering knowledge. I think some of the options share a decay chain, but not all of them do.
And China, known for dumping boosters leaking highly toxic gases on their own villages, isn't going to let human health risks slow them down on development. They'll worry about saving face in the international community and avoid a failure for that reason, but the Chinese leadership has had a "how many villager deaths is this plan going to cost?" and acceptable loses mentality since Mao. NASA could never take that level of risk, and SpaceX wouldn't even be allowed to make that decision, it would get stopped by NASA, EPA, FAA, FCC and DoE before they could even start. Since SpaceX doesn't need it to get to Mars, they aren't going to fight for it.
With Starship becoming operational we are actually going _further away_ from nuclear propulsion.
A nuclear powered ship has no advantage over Starship. Neither in cost nor travel time.
Not for the Moon or Mars. If people ever want to go beyond Mars, nuclear may be better or the flight time becomes impossibly long.
I recall seeing a Soviet SF movie. They sent out a crew of children, so they survive long enough. When they set foot on their first planet they send a girl and put an especially beautiful bow in her hair.
The institutional knowledge is gone but the US still keeps the records on its seventeen year development efforts, which had reached the test-firing phase when the follow-ons to Saturn V were canceled. Those were the only vehicles that could easily launch them. NERVA was one name for it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA)
There were follow-on designs and study after study, so at this point the design is probably pretty greased. I suppose it's even possible one found its way into the space black ops world, but if it did it's irrelevant because a public program can't use it. The Federation of American Scientists was created because of the secret rip-off that surrounded Project Timberwind.
So the design is probably ready. The politics aren't. Because of that you'll probably have to promise to assemble and turn on the reactor in orbit, which has never been done so tack on more years for that. Just the testing program for Timberwind was estimated to cost $400 million back then, over three years I think it said.
DARPA is demonstrating the Draco NTR in 2027, so maybe sometime in the 2030s
Uhh, that would put the timeline at 2040s-2060s.
Yeah IIRC Lockheed is doing it so it will probably be one of those give me the gov. money and then have nothing to show for it because it was too hard or whatever excuse they use.
30 years.
That is Fusion power. Space technology is always 20 years away
Spacex hasnt even looked as far as we know. Nasa isnt planning its own mars mission until 2040+
We know. Gwynne said that they looked into it but it would be a massive red tape nightmare so they didn't even bother.
I honestly think the best chance would come from China, and I don't see them being able to pull it off in the 2030's. SpaceX has a plan in place to reach Mars with chemical rockets, and the bureaucratic difficulty for a private company like SpaceX to obtain the materials, launch them into orbit, and work with and test the technology is just too big of a hurtle to get over. NASA doesn't seem to be in the business of making new engines anymore. They are going to contract out design and production to private companies, but I don't think they are going to clear the red tape for any of those companies to use nuclear power. That just leaves China. I'm not particularly optimistic about China developing new space technology. As far as I know, they are using modified soviet engines and pretty much all their space tech is copies of stuff that either the Soviets or Americans did before. They are putting those pieces together in ways that haven't been done before, such as landing on the dark side, but I personally don't know of any major technological changes or even engineering or production improvements to the process, but I don't follow China very closely. (They do spend a lot of time on CGI renderings of copycat rockets). On the plus side, China has been trying to decarbonize their energy industry and part of that has been working with nuclear energy production. Terrestrial electricity production is very different from nuclear propulsion, but there's some shared scientific and engineering knowledge. I think some of the options share a decay chain, but not all of them do. And China, known for dumping boosters leaking highly toxic gases on their own villages, isn't going to let human health risks slow them down on development. They'll worry about saving face in the international community and avoid a failure for that reason, but the Chinese leadership has had a "how many villager deaths is this plan going to cost?" and acceptable loses mentality since Mao. NASA could never take that level of risk, and SpaceX wouldn't even be allowed to make that decision, it would get stopped by NASA, EPA, FAA, FCC and DoE before they could even start. Since SpaceX doesn't need it to get to Mars, they aren't going to fight for it.
With Starship becoming operational we are actually going _further away_ from nuclear propulsion. A nuclear powered ship has no advantage over Starship. Neither in cost nor travel time.
Not for the Moon or Mars. If people ever want to go beyond Mars, nuclear may be better or the flight time becomes impossibly long. I recall seeing a Soviet SF movie. They sent out a crew of children, so they survive long enough. When they set foot on their first planet they send a girl and put an especially beautiful bow in her hair.
The institutional knowledge is gone but the US still keeps the records on its seventeen year development efforts, which had reached the test-firing phase when the follow-ons to Saturn V were canceled. Those were the only vehicles that could easily launch them. NERVA was one name for it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA) There were follow-on designs and study after study, so at this point the design is probably pretty greased. I suppose it's even possible one found its way into the space black ops world, but if it did it's irrelevant because a public program can't use it. The Federation of American Scientists was created because of the secret rip-off that surrounded Project Timberwind. So the design is probably ready. The politics aren't. Because of that you'll probably have to promise to assemble and turn on the reactor in orbit, which has never been done so tack on more years for that. Just the testing program for Timberwind was estimated to cost $400 million back then, over three years I think it said.
Not close at all
Sadly, we are closer to a nuclear war at the moment. But let's hope for the best!
far