NASA plans to build nuclear propulsion step by step

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 45:20

   nuclear one second. Thank you for reigniting nuclear as a propulsion system and an energy source. So on the nuclear propulsion side, you know, I will, I will sort of jokingly say how long before we can make the Kessel run in, in 12 parsecs or, or more near term, how long before we can get to Mars in 90 days? What's your plans on nuclear propulsion? So first plan is just put a win up on the board, which is what SR1 freedom is. It's a lot of repurposed hardware, no doubt.

2. 45:52

   It's funny, I think Politico put an article out today on a NASA administrator who intends to spend $2.5 billion on his nuclear power and propulsion spaceship. It was like, actually, the taxpayers spent that money over the last few years already. I'm just repurposing it into something that has real practical value instead of sitting in a warehouse or in a lab for some time period. So the PPE element, power propulsion element from the Gateway, we repurpose.

3. 46:18

   That's basically the main spacecraft. All of its electric thrusters, it's already integrated into it. We have a nuclear reactor, at least components of it that have been matured and funded by other services for decades at INL that we're going to use as the baseline for the reactor. So, look, this is what Nautilus was. Nautilus was a diesel boat, and it got repurposed as a nuclear sub. A lot of people don't know it.

4. 46:40

   But even Rickover said, hey, it was the 70% solution, but it gave birth to the nuclear navy. We're trying to do the exact same thing at NASA. So, SR-1 is not going to knock your socks off out of the gate. It's not mass-optimized by any means, but it's a step in the right direction. What comes thereafter will continue to be optimized until what I think is the ultimate goal is to be able to bring astronauts to Mars and back with the fewest miracles required.

5. 47:07

   And that may not always be the fastest way, but if it doesn't require cryogenic refueling as a step to getting the boots on Mars, that's a win. So I actually think that the first human mission to Mars will be, at least if it was NASA, would be chemically augmented nuclear electric propulsion and be able to send astronauts to Mars and bring them back. not the fastest, but without having to require a lot of extra miracles along the way.

6. 47:35

   And we just got to keep going, right? This is the whole point of taking it out of the lab, getting into practical application, budgeting it properly, because material science is, the hotter we can run the reactor, the more mass we can save, because we don't need football field-sized radiators that are up there. The better we can do with power conversion, the more we challenge solar as the optimal pathway, at least inside of Jupiter.

7. 47:58

   But there's no doubt if you want to go in the outer solar system and you want to at least delay the necessity of cryogenic refueling for missions to crude missions to Mars and back, like we've got to be making investments in nuclear.