That's roughly six months faster than it would take to reach the red planet with current technologies.
The Nuclear Thermal and Nuclear Electric Propulsion concept is a new class of bimodal nuclear propulsion system that uses a "wave rotor topping cycle," as per aThe scientist behind the proposal, Prof. Ryan Gosse from the University of Florida, believes it could reduce travel time to Mars to a mere 45 days. If the technology does work as planned, it could drastically reduce travel times to Mars and make missions to the red planet innumerably safer for humans.
NASA's new NIAC grant recipient leverages two of the key concepts behind nuclear propulsion. Nuclear-Thermal Propulsion utilizes a nuclear reactor to heat liquid hydrogen propellant so that it is converted into plasma and channeled through a nozzle to generate thrust.Nuclear-Electric Propulsion , meanwhile, uses a nuclear reactor to power a Hall-Effect thruster with electricity. This, in turn, generates an electromagnetic field that ionizes and accelerates an inert gas to create thrust.
Gosse, who serves as the Hypersonics Program Area Lead at the University of Florida, combines the advantages of both NTP and NEP with his new concept. The engineer proposes a bimodal design based on a solid-core NERVA reactor that would provide a specific impulse of 900 seconds. That is twice the performance of existing chemical rockets.
On top of that, Gosse also proposes using a Wave Rotor to further compress the reaction mass using pressure generated by the reactor's heating of the liquid hydrogen fuel. According to the engineer, this has the potential to deliver thrust levels comparable to that of a NERVA-class NTP concept but with a higher Isp of 1400-2000 seconds. Combining this with an NEP cycle would produce even higher thrust levels.
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