david@SDCSVAX.ARPA (05/18/85)
From: crash!david@SDCSVAX.ARPA
I believe the project you are referring to is project NERVA (Nuclear
Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application). It was going to be the rocket en-
gine that would take us to Mars.
There were many reasons why it was dropped. First and foremost was
cost. Hundreds of millions had been spent on research of the project
(funded by NASA and AEC) and they hadn't even begun development. Vietnam
helped to drop the program.
Secondly, it wasn't really necessary to send men to Mars, and that
was essentially what the program was about. The Mariner and Viking
probes were advanced enough to give almost any data needed. And besides, it
didn't look like the Russians were going to send people to Mars, so there
was no rush...
Another reason was the difficulty of getting such a massive rocket out
of the atmosphere (the craft was to hold six people, and the trip would
take two years, so supplies would be numerous...). The researchers decided it'd
be better to wait until we got a space station up where the rocket could be
assembled and launched. The project was also to depend on the use of the
shuttle to transport supplies, people, etc. We know what happened to the
shuttle...
And lastly, an even better engine had been envisioned. A nuclear-elec-
tric drive engine could be much smaller: it wouldn't require as much propellant
as the nuclear engine running off liquid hydrogen.
Yes, there were tests of nuclear-related engines or reactors (15,
to be exact). One of them (the NRX-A6) ran an hour at 1100MW (which was full
power).
Just a little bit of trivia - if the project hadn't been cancelled,
we'd have reached Mars in 1982. Tough luck, huh?
-David Thacher
{ihnp4, cbosgd, sdcsvax, noscvax}!crash!david
crash!david@ucsd.arpa