US military gives Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to develop nuclear spacecraft::The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory just awarded $33.7 million to Lockheed Martin to advance the development of space nuclear propulsion and power tech.
US military gives Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to develop nuclear spacecraft::The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory just awarded $33.7 million to Lockheed Martin to advance the development of space nuclear propulsion and power tech.
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.