33 million? Sounds like this project is about to overrun 20ish billion before they " find out " that they can't do it.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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That's because it's just a grant for preliminary design and research work. They'll review it after this stage is complete to see how feasible it looks before going forward with further stages. It's not 33 million to develop a whole new kind of rocket propulsion system, that would be a ludicrously low price. It's in the article, though the headline is a bit vague on what the award actually is.
Its Lockheed, that's gonna get greenlit faster than a fly finding fresh dung
LOL, I was gonna say, $33M will get you a super nice set of wrenches and the best nuts and bolts mankind can produce.
A working nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) engine was already built in the 60s under NASA's NERVA project. It is one of the highest technological readiness level solutions we have to the dilemma of high specific impulse versus high thrust present in the current spsce engine technologies. Imo we need something like this to make manned interplanetary missions viable.
NTP was just a fachade, what NERV was actually researching was the human instrumentality project, I saw it in a robots documental
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded $33.7 million to Lockheed Martin as part of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) effort to "mature high-power nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies and spacecraft design."
"Nuclear fission development for space applications is key to introducing technologies that could dramatically change how we move and explore in the vastness of space," Barry Miles, JETSON program manager and principal investigator at Lockheed Martin, said in a statement.
"From high-power electrical subsystem and electric propulsion to nuclear thermal propulsion or fission surface power, Lockheed Martin is focused on developing these systems with our important government agencies and industry partners," Miles added.
In addition, Westinghouse Government Services, based in South Carolina, received a contract to continue research into utilizing high-power nuclear fission systems in spacecraft.
In July, NASA and the U.S. military chose the aerospace giant to develop and launch a spacecraft to test nuclear thermal propulsion in space.
The project, known as DRACO ("Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations"), could feature a propulsion system that's a number of times more efficient than traditional chemical methods.
The original article contains 410 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
So after $40M more and a half decade of delays past due, we might have LM produce something with record efficiency.
we might have LM produce something with record efficiency.
Narrator: They didn't