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Old 02-22-2017, 10:40 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Default SUMMARY: "Fast Track" Lunar NTR System for FLO and Mars

Here's a short but interesting study from January 1993 reviewing a modular, standardized approach for building Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) propulsion stages for the First Lunar Outpost (FLO) and later Mars missions under the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). It was proposed to build standardized propellant tanks that could be mated with a pair or triad of standardized 50,000 lbs thrust nuclear rocket engines derived from the old NERVA design (and upgraded for the times and new technology) that would be capable of propelling the lunar and Mars vehicles on their prospective missions, with a much lower initial mass in low Earth orbit (IMLEO) than would be possible with regular chemical rocket propulsion, allowing for greater payload weight or a smaller heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) to be used.

The rocket stages used for the lunar mission TLI would be expended into a 100,000 year minimum lifetime solar orbit by using a "trailing edge lunar gravity boost" (aiming for the 'trailing edge" of the Moon as it orbited around the Earth, whipping around it, and flinging the spent nuclear stage with its highly radioactive spent rocket engines into a safe solar orbit, where it would drift aimlessly in solar orbit for at least 100,000 years to allow the radioactive isotopes and actinides produced by the nuclear fission during the rocket burn to decay to safe levels...

An interesting proposal, and still one which will probably have to be embraced at some point if we want to do Mars missions with any regularity or more than a few "one off" flags-n-footprints sort of missions... Unlike the "nuclear shuttle" of the 70's and early 80's (a REUSABLE nuclear rocket stage designed to shuttle cargo and crews between the Moon and Earth) these stages were intended to be expendable and sent into disposal orbits after their one and only use. (Part of the hoo-hah that got the dander up of the anti-nuke crowd was the possibility of a mission failure sending a "hot" nuclear shuttle reactor or stage careening into Earth's atmosphere and burning up... scattering highly radioactive heavy elements over a wide area (like the Columbia shuttle debris "footprint"-- imagine if it had been "hot" radioactive fuel components from a spent previously operated reactor (an unoperated reactor would be mostly safe, but an operated reactor would be highly radioactive and dangerous).

Anyway, enjoy... some interesting concepts for how they planned to operate the Mars missions, which hasn't changed much in the intervening time... it's similar to the current DRM-5 proposals for conducting Mars missions.

Later! OL J R
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Old 02-22-2017, 10:49 PM
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1. Characteristics of NERVA type engines...

2. FLO mission groundrules and assumptions...

3. FLO NTR transportation system elements...

4. Benefits of NTR propulsion for the FLO mission...

5. Expendable FLO TLI vehicle...

6. Mars mission groundrules and assumptions...

7. 2007 Mars Cargo vehicle...

8. Mars Cargo and Piloted Vehicle delta-v budgets...

9. 2010 Mars piloted vehicle for the "no MEV, no TEI propellant" mission model...

10. Split cargo/piloted vehicle Mars mission scenario...
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Old 02-22-2017, 10:53 PM
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1. 2009 Mars tanker vehicle...

2. Relative sizes of FLO/Mars mission vehicles (various modes).

3. Basic building blocks of the modular NTR approach...

That's it for this one... Enjoy!

Could make some interesting model rockets... unlike anything else at the launch field... have the lander for a "nose cone" pop off and land under it's own parachute or something, use clear fins on the NTR stage...

Later! OL J R
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