Russia is Developing Nuclear Fission Spaceship to Reach the Red Planet
While the U.S. dreams of plasma, Russia looks to nuclear
With the Space Shuttles on their way to retirement the U.S. is pouring millions into developing the
next generation of manned spacecraft, a return to rocket-mounted capsule designs and departure from the space-plane design of the shuttle. The Ares I-X underwent its
first test flight yesterday.
In the near-term rockets like the Ares and its foreign competitors will likely retain a chemical booster to provide the thrust and impulse needed to propel the rocket into space. The critical question, though is what to use once in space to provide the sustained power needed to reach distant targets like the Moon or Mars.
Some are advocating traditional chemical rockets to due to the job. While expensive and potentially dangerous, they have the advantage of being a thoroughly proven technology.
NASA
is also eying non-nuclear
plasma rockets as a possible solution.
Now, news has broke that Russia may turn to a nuclear fission engine for its own Mars or Moon mission. Anatoly Perminov, Russian rocket scientist, mechanical engineer, and acting director of the Russian Federal Space Agency
announced at a meeting of the commission on the modernization of the Russian economy that the design would be finalized by 2012 and that full development would take approximately 9 years.
The project will cost approximately 17 billion rubles (over $580 million), a lot of money for the cash-strapped Russian space program. Still, another Russian space official, Anatoly Koroteyev, president of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics and head of the Keldysh research center, says that the new propulsion system is critical to a successful Mars mission as it will provide the high degree of energy-mass efficiency needed for a fast and cost-effective trip.
He says that Russia's
current technology cannot accomplish its goals -- to put a space base on the Moon and send a manned mission to the Red Planet, Mars.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16662
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Далеку се овие Марс.
), е проектот Орион. Се работи за брод кој што би требало да биде придвижуван со експлозии на минијатурни нуклеарни, или термонуклеарни бомби. Ударниот талас од бомбите (кои што експлодираат една по една) се пренесува до дебела челична или алуминиумска плоча, која што е поврзана со бродот преку систем од амортизери, за ублажување на ударот. На овој начин бродот би можел постепено да се забрза до 20 – 30 km/s, т.е. на 10% од брзината на светлината. Доволно за да ги посетиме сите планети од сончевиот систем. (Но малку озрачени 
