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US military gives Lockheed Martin $33.7 million to develop nuclear spacecraft (www.space.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why do you think so?

JETSON aims to launch a fission reactor that will be started up once in space. The reactor will generate heat, which is then transferred to Stirling power converters to produce electricity. This can then be used to power spacecraft payloads or electric thrusters for propulsion.

I can see launching nuclear payloads being a tough sell politically but the technological principles are sound.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's also worth noting that past mars solar panels start to be functionally useless, so we use...nuclear powered spacecraft... to generate electricity when needed and have done for half a century. It's not like nuclear stuff in space is a new idea

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It's not like nuclear stuff in space is a new idea

We even detonated atomic bombs in space