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+--- Thread: Research New liquid uranium rocket could halve trip to Mars (engineering) (/thread-18796.html)
New liquid uranium rocket could halve trip to Mars (engineering) - C C - Sep 18, 2025
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/new-liquid-uranium-rocket-could-halve-trip-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/article/abs/pii/S0094576525002838
RE: New liquid uranium rocket could halve trip to Mars (engineering) - Syne - Sep 18, 2025
My first question is how do you counter the spin? Might be a problem for trajectory/orientation in flight and space, depending on the mass involved.
RE: New liquid uranium rocket could halve trip to Mars (engineering) - confused2 - Sep 18, 2025
(Sep 18, 2025 12:31 AM)Syne Wrote: My first question is how do you counter the spin? Might be a problem for trajectory/orientation in flight and space, depending on the mass involved.
Two rotating in opposite directions would cancel out the gyro effect.
RE: New liquid uranium rocket could halve trip to Mars (engineering) - Syne - Sep 18, 2025
I don't know what's feasible with this technology.