Prometheus: The Paradigm Buster

This proves that Bush is pro-space. The new director of NASA O'keefe reveived the nuclear powered space craft.

ping!

Space Ping! This is the space ping list! Let me know if you want on or off this list!

Thanks for putting me on.

No Problem!

I'm glad to see NASA is doing something like this, I just hope we will eventually see some high thrust nuclear-thermal engines that could be used in Lunar or Mars landing craft. The ion engines are a step forward, but we need the high thrust engines to complement it as well.

I'm past the point of believing NASA will do anything significant in space within the next 20 years. If this goes like so many other NASA programs, they'll build a couple of neat lab devices and then have the budget cut and terminate the program before anything gets in space. I would be very depressed if I thought that NASA was our future in space, but I don't, so I'm upbeat about what will happen in the next 5 years thanks to people like Burt Rutan.

I think Bush was going to do a major space announcement, however the Columbia disaster may have put a hold on things for now. However if you check Mars Prize, there is a priave effort if go to Mars with out NASA.

Bush is pro-space

Still waiting for his report on the status of property rights in space.

If Bush were pro-space then NASA would have been gone. That agency has done virtually nothing in 20 years except waste money. Based on the success of the recent missions they may be better off just launching an ICBM at the planet. They have crashed every lander mission launched during the last decade. Why spend a massive amount of money just to waste a targeted landing site?

But this IS a step forward. :)

Maybe we can escape here yet.

I can learn to farm on Mars.

Mars is a sideshow. How can we get to HD 70642, the new solar system, 90 lightyears from here?

Either Hyperspace (from Babylon 5) or Warp Speed (from Star Trek) or if there is some Stargate. If I had my choice I prefer Hyperspace. To me that is more realstic than Warp Speed. We should be concentrating efforts FTL travel.

By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
02 July 2003

NASA has embarked on a challenging quest to build a powerful nuclear reactor for long-duration deep space excursions.

As part of the multi-pronged Prometheus Project, engineers and scientists are now tackling plans for the nuclear-powered Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). This flagship mission using electric propulsion powered by a nuclear fission reactor would showcase a slate of key technologies. It also promises to usher in a new era of solar system exploration.

The amount of power available to JIMO from a nuclear reactor would be hundreds of times greater than on current interplanetary spacecraft.

JIMO's ambitious interplanetary passport -- departing Earth no earlier than 2011 -- calls for orbiting three planet-sized moons of Jupiter: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Each moon may harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. Loaded down with science instruments, JIMO's tour allows for inspecting the makeup of these moons, their history, and their ability to support life.

But building JIMO is no cakewalk.

The technical hurdles ahead are daunting. So much so, there is a cynical running joke within some corners of the space science community that the icy moons of Jupiter may thaw before JIMO ever shows up.

Paradigm buster

A JIMO milestone was met this past April with NASA awarding study contracts to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman Space Technologies. Those mission studies are to be completed by year's end.

Early feedback from the trio of contractors is heartening, said Alan Newhouse, Director Project Prometheus, the Nuclear Systems Program at NASA Headquarters.

"I was very encouraged by the breadth of thinking that they are promising us. Whether they deliver of course, we'll know when they do it," Newhouse told SPACE.com .

JIMO does not signal incremental change. It's a "paradigm buster," explains Colleen Hartman, Director of the Solar System Exploration Division within NASA's Office of Space Science.

"This is a huge leap for mankind…not a tiny step," Hartman noted at a Women in Aerospace (WIA) forum on new initiatives in space science held last month in Washington, D.C.

Why the icy moons of Jupiter as JIMO's destination?

"We're following the water. That's one of the main tenants of NASA…because we know that where there is water there is life on Earth," Hartman said. "Is that going to be true throughout the solar system? Frankly, I certainly don’t know. There is energy. There is water. There are organics. There is a possibility of life. So that's why we are endeavoring this icy moons tour," she explained.

Issues ahead

Whether or not JIMO winds up slipping year after year due to problems in fabricating a space-rated nuclear reactor is an issue still to be dealt with.

That's the view of Jerry Grey, Director, Science and Technology Policy for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). "It's not going to be easy. But it's certainly worth doing," he told SPACE.com .

Grey underscores the challenging, long road ahead.

Among issues are special orbit precautions -- putting JIMO into a nuclear safe orbit, to checkout hardware and activate the space reactor high above Earth. Then there's the shielding problem, making sure JIMO's delicate science instruments aren't toasted by the reactor's radiation. Yet another matter is radiating waste heat from the reactor into space.

"One of the biggest concerns in nuclear systems is development and testing," Grey said. Ground facilities for building and checking out new nuclear systems will be costly, take a long time, and involve a high-level of safety precautions, he said.

"And until we do proper testing, we're not going to fly any Prometheus systems," Grey said.

Add to this mix public perception.

"Most of what the public perceives about nuclear systems is wrong…but they perceive it that way. Therefore, you had to deal with it," Grey said.

Time to Investigate

Handling public perception about danger from nuclear systems is part of NASA's overall strategy in moving forward on Project Prometheus and JIMO.

"I appreciate the fact that NASA's papers that have been put out on Prometheus have said it will be a very open, transparent process for the public to see into," said Kristine Svinicki, Senior Policy Advisor for Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho. That state is home for the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and the future site of advanced nuclear reactor work.

Svinicki said that much of the solar system remains impossible to adequately explore without new nuclear propulsion systems. That is a significant limitation, she said, and the public needs to make a candid assessment of that constraint.

"It's a question for the American people," said NASA's Hartman. "The laws of physics can't be broken. If you want to go to the outer planets, to be an explorer of this solar system, to understand comparative planetary biology…the American public pays for it. So I believe it is their choice," she said.

Hartman said that power is essential for JIMO to obtain the kind of science observations hoped for.

"You want to have time on target. If you are whizzing by Las Vegas, you're not going to gamble very much. If you sit and stay…that's basically the idea here. You can investigate what's there. You can have serendipity take place," Hartman said.

Ground shakeouts

Putting the pieces together to make JIMO real is a massive tradeoff between many knotty technical issues. And there is also need to keep an eye on the nuclear engineering workforce.

"We are very short of graduate nuclear engineers that know anything about aerospace and vice versa," said NASA's Newhouse. The space agency has begun to come to grips with this situation, he said.

Newhouse said that ground checkouts of JIMO hardware means use of large chambers that mimic the thermal and vacuum environment of space. "You have to be very careful in making a decision to do a ground test or not do a ground test," he said.

Also there's need for ground shakeouts of JIMO's ion engines -- or Hall thrusters now used extensively in commercial applications for satellite station-keeping -- essential hardware that must be long-lived to push the spacecraft to Jupiter over years of thrusting. Departing no earlier than 2011, JIMO's Earth-to-Jupiter transit time might be as long as seven years.

Magic mantra

Reducing the overall mass of the spacecraft is what Newhouse labels as the "magic mantra" for the JIMO effort.

In the nuclear design process, Newhouse added, certain testing called "criticals" will be necessary, making use of nuclear fuels to assure reactor performance is up to snuff. Any nuclear testing is to be done under the auspices of the Department of Energy.

"I certainly don't want to have a reactor that's never been run before…never been tested…then turned on en route to Jupiter. That's not a good idea," Newhouse said. "We will probably want to do a full-up test of something that looks like the reactor we want to fly in space," he said.

Newhouse said that one of the most difficult issues is ground testing. On the nuclear side of the business, facilities have aged and, in some cases, are no longer operable. Industry contractors, as part of their JIMO plans, are outlining ground testing plans and facility requirements.

Despite being faced with years of hard-nosed engineering, Newhouse points to one maxim he embraces. "It is easy to go nowhere. It requires no energy and has no risk except that of being left behind. To go forward and run ahead is a supreme test."

Either Hyperspace (from Babylon 5) or Warp Speed (from Star Trek) or if there is some Stargate.

All of these things are outside the bounds of Physics, as we currently understand it. Unless we're missing something (which we may well be), they're all impossible. If they are possible, we currently have ZERO theoretical guidance as to how they would work.

1) I'm not opposed to continued basic research. Quite the contrary. And sooner or later, some new discovery or insight might point the way to your hyperwarpgate ... but I'm not holding my breath.

2) Meanwhile, I believe "we" should continue pursuing means of interplanetary trave that are within the physics we understand. That certainly includes the use of nuclear fission for powering spacecraft.

The Mars Prize site has been updated. Go to www.marsprize.org