Sep 18, 2025 12:27 AM
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...p-to-mars/
INTRO: If humanity wants to turn Mars into more than a daydream, we need a new kind of rocket. Not just a bigger booster or a fancier capsule, but something radically different. At Ohio State University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, engineers are betting on a dangerous-sounding fuel that might slash the time it takes to reach the Red Planet — molten uranium.
Their prototype, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), is pretty wild. Instead of relying on chemical combustion, or even the solid nuclear fuels tested in the 1960s, the CNTR spins cylinders of liquid uranium at thousands of revolutions per minute. That spinning keeps the uranium in place while hydrogen propellant bubbles through it, heating up until it blasts from the nozzle at blistering speeds.
Spencer Christian, a PhD student leading the prototype construction at Ohio State, put it bluntly: “You could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year.” (MORE - details
PAPER: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...6525002838
INTRO: If humanity wants to turn Mars into more than a daydream, we need a new kind of rocket. Not just a bigger booster or a fancier capsule, but something radically different. At Ohio State University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, engineers are betting on a dangerous-sounding fuel that might slash the time it takes to reach the Red Planet — molten uranium.
Their prototype, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), is pretty wild. Instead of relying on chemical combustion, or even the solid nuclear fuels tested in the 1960s, the CNTR spins cylinders of liquid uranium at thousands of revolutions per minute. That spinning keeps the uranium in place while hydrogen propellant bubbles through it, heating up until it blasts from the nozzle at blistering speeds.
Spencer Christian, a PhD student leading the prototype construction at Ohio State, put it bluntly: “You could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year.” (MORE - details
PAPER: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...6525002838