I don't exactly know the maths behind it, bur if something we're to go wrong either within our outwith out atmosphere and the craft were to explode, wouldn't that do a lot of fucking damage?

>>7951688
Damage to Earth? Not relevant in space. Damage to the craft? You can say the same thing about chemical rockets.

>>7951695
I believe that NASA and the United States aerospace industry hasn't been testing them much because they are messy. Furthermore any nuclear physics data needed should be collectible from inertial confinement fusion experiments.

They definitely have it on their list of preferred options for pushing back against the rocket equation however.

>>7951695
The problem is that an explosion during takeoff would scatter radioactive material all over the place.

>>7951685
>Why the fuck are we still dicking around with electric rockets when nuclear rockets have high Isp and high thrust?
Nuclear rockets have low Isp compared to electric propulsion.

Furthermore, they have large minimum mass, are only suitable for major burns, and require bulky, non-storable liquid hydrogen propellant to have Isp better than chemical rockets.

>>7951695
>Damage to Earth? Not relevant in space.
There's no use for a nuclear rocket that you only use in deep space. It's a technology that has no application except upper stages of launch vehicles.

>>7951685
>3.1 MB for a fucking image
Kill yourself

>>7951715
No the NERVA tests went perfectly, Congress killed it because it was so successful that it was starting to make a Mars mission inevitable and they were still feeling the financial burn of Apollo.
>>7951719
They aren't used for takeoff, they are in the third stage.
>>7951738
>Nuclear rockets have low Isp compared to electric propulsion
It's one quarter which is amazing compared to how much thrust you get out of it.
>Furthermore, they have large minimum mass
Thrust to weight ratio was improving rapidly in the 60s.
>There's no use for a nuclear rocket that you only use in deep space. It's a technology that has no application except upper stages of launch vehicles.
Upper stages are fired in outer space, maybe not deep space but it still not in Earth's atmosphere. Isn't this a classic liberal argument against nuclear power "buh what if it blows up?"

I don't know why you are dismissing nuclear rockets the technology worked flawlessly when tested and was approved for a Mars mission. This is definetly not a case of it was canned because it didn't work good. It was canned because it worked too good.

>>7951766
>They aren't used for takeoff, they are in the third stage.
a 2-ton reactor blowing up is still bad, regardless of it generating power or not. That is the main concern.
Hippies are still trowing tantrums when NASA puts a RTG in orbit, not because it will do anything bad in space, but on the highly unlikely chance that the rocket blows up and showers half of Florida in Polonium(not that it would be a bad thing, it is Florida after all)

>>7951784
I like Florida it has Disneyland. The other states suck, middle of nowhere and contain nothing of value.
List of interesting states:
>California - Hollywood
>Texas - Cowboys
>New York - New York City
>Louisiana - Jazz
>Illinois - Gangsters
>Florida - Disneyland and NASA
>Nevada - Aliens, gambling and hookers
That is all.

>>7951766
>>Nuclear rockets have low Isp compared to electric propulsion
>It's one quarter
In fact, electric propulsion can go far beyond that. They are simply not comparable or competing technologies.

>Upper stages are fired in outer space, maybe not deep space but it still not in Earth's atmosphere.
...and you think when things blow up in orbit, they don't end up in Earth's atmosphere?

>Isn't this a classic liberal argument against nuclear power "buh what if it blows up?"
Nuclear power plants are non-mass-sensitive systems, with plenty of allowance for multiple redundant safety systems and containment shells. Even so, the catastrophic potential is a serious concern.

Nuclear rockets are bleeding-edge, no-room-for-error systems, which would fly on vehicles known for blowing up frequently. Of course that's unacceptable.

>It was canned because it worked too good.
It was canned because it didn't offer a net benefit. Nuclear upper stages gain you one and only one advantage: the ability to launch the same payload on a smaller, cheaper booster. Its only potential is to save money.

But it's not a cheap technology itself. The overall cost of the rocket would be more with the smaller booster and the nuclear upper stage, than it would be with simply a larger booster and a chemical upper stage, or a multi-launch mission.

The end result is that nuclear rockets offer no practical benefit at all, even if you ignored the safety concerns. If you want to launch big payloads, you just build big rockets.

>>7951766
>Congress killed it because it was so successful
>It was canned because it worked too good.
Next, tell us the one about how someone invented a carburetor that made cars get a hundred miles to the gallon, but the oil companies paid the inventor off and never released it.

Cant we all just agree that the thing we need is a VASIMR-style rocket, powered by fission/fusion?
Getting into space can be done by normal chemical rockets, but if we want some decent interplanetary travel times, we need either a NERVA or VASIMR design.

>>7951825
also, dont forget the MemeDrive.

>>7951685

What do you think will happen if it explodes well below the earths atmosphere?

>>7951814
I just don't understand /sci/ why must you be contrarian at every instance? Can you post one iota of proof that NASA quit nuclear rockets because they were not very useful?
And funny /sci/ is saying that "all they were good for is saving money, meh just build a bigger more expensive rocket" So why the fuck do you all trash NASA and ULA for doing exactly this and glorify SpaceX when all they do is reduce costs

>>7951825
How fast can VASIMIR get to Mars?

Cost. NASA doesn't even have enough money to modernize their radioisotopic generators so they use less plutonium

>>7951685
>°R

>>7951832
>"all they were good for is saving money, meh just build a bigger more expensive rocket"
How stupid are you? Can you really believe this is what I was saying?

Since anything you can do with a nuclear thermal rocket stage can be done with a chemical rocket stage, all they're POTENTIALLY good for is saving money, but the truth is that they're not cheap enough for that, so they're not good for anything at all.

The government often funds research and development of inferior, useless technologies. Partly, this is done out of reasonable need for information, because they can't be sure the technology is not important until they've examined thoroughly. Partly, it is done out of the senseless wastefulness of government bureaucracy, in which people want to command large budgets and receive large salaries and contract payments for themselves and their friends.

>So why the fuck do you all trash NASA and ULA for doing exactly this and glorify SpaceX when all they do is reduce costs
SpaceX ACTUALLY reduces costs. NASA and ULA just TALK ABOUT reducing costs as part of their rhetoric to justify extracting ever-larger sums of money from the government for services which don't expand in scope.

Nuclear thermal rockets would be like the space shuttle: ostensibly about saving money, clearly serving no other purpose, but with no potential to do so.

>>7951850
'merica, what do you expect?

>>7951856
You still haven't posted any proof that the government thought that the nuclear rocket was useless and inferior. you are just assuming that because it was terminated even though I already told you why.

So first you say that it had potential to save money, and now you are u-turning on that?

>>7951685
because we only went to space to beat the russians and american politicans are too short sighted to recognise the importance of space tech. To quote VSG its all "ape games"

>>7951862
>I already told you why.
You told me your wacky conspiracy theory, then you complain that I haven't proved your conspiracy theory wrong.

I'm not sure you understand how this burden of proof stuff works.

>>7951862
>>>>It was canned because it didn't offer a net benefit. Nuclear upper stages gain you one and only one advantage: the ability to launch the same payload on a smaller, cheaper booster. Its only potential is to save money.
>>>>But it's not a cheap technology itself. The overall cost of the rocket would be more with the smaller booster and the nuclear upper stage, than it would be with simply a larger booster and a chemical upper stage, or a multi-launch mission.
>>>"all they were good for is saving money, meh just build a bigger more expensive rocket"
>>How stupid are you? Can you really believe this is what I was saying?
>So first you say that it had potential to save money, and now you are u-turning on that?


>>How stupid are you?
>Really, incredibly, unbelievably stupid. You'll doubt that I have grade-school levels of literacy.

>>7951874
>Clearly written on it's Wikipedia article
>Wacky conspiracy theory

Im still pissed over this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus

>>7952017
>name your project after Prometheus
>expect it to end well
>name next project after Icarus

>>7951801
California is great, I wouldn't say that its because of Hollywood though
Illinois is boring, there's nothing going on outside of Chicago, and the state has a huge lack of natural beauty because of farming and flatness. Started house music though so good on them

>>7951801
well, we can move Disneyland and NASA to Texas. Florida is just old people anyway, they wont notice a few years less due to radiation poisoning.

>>7951833
I was looking this up (it depends on vehicle design but I'm hearing less than two months) and found this gem of complete lack of understanding in an article

"Using this method, the Curiosity Rover took 8 months and 11 days to land on Mars. This is because current chemical rockets and propulsion systems require large amounts of fuel and have a static rate of propulsion.

However, the design of VASIMR allows for continuous generation of propulsion. In other words (if it had a infinite supply of fuel and it didn’t fail mechanically) it could theoretically keep accelerating to near the speed of light."

>>7952017
Blame Congress. They hold back NASA so much. If SLS and Europa Clipper flops I am literally going to cry because that's it, my childhood hero is dead, killed off by budget cuts.
>>7952078
>Started house music though so good on them
Didn't know that, I love house music.
>>7952086
Pretty sure NASA is in Florida so that rockets can blow up over the Atlantic.
>>7952090
Two months? Wow. Why aren't we spending more money on this? C-could it make it to Planet Nine in my lifetime?

>>7952090
this wasnt a IFLS article, by any chance?

>>7952090
>>7951833
>>How fast can VASIMIR get to Mars?
>(it depends on vehicle design but I'm hearing less than two months)
You can go in four months just by chemical propulsion. The lowest-energy transit is about an eight-month trip.

Four months is already pretty short, there's not a big difference between surviving in space for four months vs. two months. The main thing effective electric propulsion could get you would be schedule freedom. Continuous acceleration is mostly good for shortening very long trips, which are what you get when you launch between windows, not for making reasonably short trips even shorter.

Anyway, VASIMR is a joke. Just one more technology for NASA to pretend to be preparing for a Mars mission. It's nowhere near working, and when it does work, it won't be much different from established electric propulsion, like hall thrusters. The problem with electric propulsion isn't the thruster, it's the power source.

If you have an intense power source, the simplest way to remove heat is to shed material in a way that carries the heat away, and the most productive way to do so is to have this coolant also be the reaction mass: so, a thermal rocket. But this is subject to the heat tolerance of available materials.

So if you want to do better than thermal rockets, then you need radiators, which tend to be both massive and fragile, to remove the waste heat of your power source. This basically means you can't do better than solar panels in the inner solar system. In the outer solar system, nuclear thermal-electric just gets you something close to inner-solar-system solar power performance.

The truth is, we're pretty much up against the limits of electric propulsion already. VASIMR won't deliver on its promises.

What we really need for dramatic improvement is something like a fusion rocket or fission fragment rocket, with much higher thermodynamic efficiency than a nuclear steam engine.

>>7951685
As much as I agree with you, it is still dangerous and will need a lot more work to even be considered.

>>7951685
We ain’t got no business on Mars. Now I’m thankful for the drugs that kills bugs, mosquitos, mice and fleas

But instead of us tryin’ to get up to Mars, we better get down on our knees, and thank the good Lord for the world we have.

Besides, if God intended we should go to Mars why’d He put it so far away?

>>7951688
you don't exactly know grammar, either. ffs...

>>7952174
Lol thats what my grandmother said. I said to her that if God didn't want us to go to Mars he would have blown up every rocket we sent there, He hasn't so there clearly isn't a problem. She seemed satisfied by this response. It's ironic that religious people are anti-space colonization because NASA is based in the Bible Belt. Half the people working there are probably devout Christians.