The Nuclear Salt Water Rocket - Possibly the Craziest Rocket Engine Ever Imagined.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ม.ค. 2021
- The Nuclear Salt Water Rocket is a rocket engine concept that uses a rapid nuclear reaction in a Uranium salt dissolved in water to create a high thrust, high efficiency engine which eclipses the performance of any rocket engine ever designed. It's a concept originally presented by Robert Zubrin, which is appealing because it looks more scientifically plausable than many other futuristic propulsion concepts.
It's also scary on so many levels, using a propellent that has to be stabilized by specially designed tanks, and relies on managing a small nuclear explosion with power outputs of hundreds of gigawatts.
The original paper can be read here:
arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/...
And Atomic Rockets has a section on the device:
www.projectrho.com/public_html...
The Kerbal mod version is available as part of Nertea's "Far Future Technologies":
forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Fly S.A.F.E.: Surfing Atop Fisson Explosions
Love it!
yes
revield)
Suicidal Atomic Fart Engine
This needs to be on a T-Shirt @Scott Manley
"non-stop Chernobyl", "weapons grade uranium", "fly safe".
Welcome to the CIA watchlist, bois.
So CIA Watchlist has the same keywords as Metalcore Band Name Generator? Interesting... :D
I had to actively register with with the feds to buy nitromethane for rocket engines a decade ago. I'm sure they have a dossier on me, c'est la vie.
Czarnobyl not chernobyl
@@marty2129 lol good one
@@EngineEnginer no its chernobyl
Engines, % C, and "No known reasons it wouldn't work" - What a time to be alive.
Hell yeah!
Feels a little bit like a modern Bussard Ramjet. Hopefully this proves to be more feasible than that though.
We've had realistic designs that could reach 10-12% of the speed of light for YEARS, though. Project Orion was not fucking around.
@@augustovasconcellos7173 Project Orion, Medusa, Breakthrough Starshot, Fission Fragment Reactor engines, the list goes on...
with all that going on, alive for how long?
"So you know what we've thought about?"
"Please don't tell me you want to use nukes as a propulsion method again"
"Oh no not nukes, we want to make a non-stop Chernobyl"
"We only need ONE nuke! ... it just explodes for minutes instead of microseconds."
"How is the engine running?"
"Not great -not terrible."
😂😂
"He's delusional, take him to the infirmary"
"How is the engine running?"
"yes"
Instead of 3.6 roentgen, 3.6 kilonewtons
@@thespaceman9146 Huh.. I'm dumb.. please tell how a radiation unit is equivalent to a force unit here?
Kerbal Space Program 2 developers:
"Write that down, write that down!"
The trailer seems to feature an inertial confinement fusion engine. I doubt they forgot about this one...
We can hope
KSP2 already has a NSWR.
@@GrandProtectorDark didnt they only have the standard nuclear engine?
There's a pretty popular mod, Interstellar, that has detailed models of many different types of nuclear engines, all of them based on proposed, real designs. These include thermal, salt water, fusion and fission and require you to be able to regulate heat, fuels, nuclear waste and propellant.
Honestly, at this point in history, THIS is the best engine we've got for REAL interplanetary travel.
Far away of my A
Yeah this one seems completely doable in the short term. Not sure of anyone has the will to try it out.
If we want to actually explore the solar system and end this robot foreplay nonsense, this seems to be our best bet. The thing I like about this engine is how scalable it is.
I still think we should pursue inertial confinement fusion engines for Solar System exploration, propellants for those engines are vastly easier to mine and refine elsewhere in the solar system.
@@kenshi_cv2407 have you read much about that muon catalyzed fusion? Doesn't work for making power, but heard it could work great for propulsion (I'm still a fan of these salt water rockets since your need for an external power source is limited to powering pumps and not much else).
A space ship is gonna need lots of power, and inertial confinement also needs a lot of power. At that point, you're gonna need a massive fission reactor regardless. In fact, I'm willing to bet that your consumption of fissile material would be greater powering a fusion drive than you would consume with a salt water design, for a vessel of comparable mass and velocity.
"900 times the energy of TNT"
Excellent
If fact, that is very low for a nuclear device, gasoline has more than twice the energy of TNT.
"Excellent"
I can just hear Mr Burns saying that...
@@misterguts The energy density of TNT isn't actually that good. especially compared with rocket fuels.
@@karstenschuhmann8334 Yeah, it's bad cos of the weight of all that water, and your per kg solubility isn't going to be above the ballpark of a percent
@@karstenschuhmann8334 I think famously, Twinkies have a much higher energy density than TNT, TNT has an energy density of about 1 kilocalories per gram, whereas Twinkies has 3.4 kcal/g, but this is mainly because Twinkies or gasoline don't have built-in oxidisers
"Non-stop Chernobyl" sounds like a perfect angle for the pitch to the investors.
Or the name of a Metal band?
I'd fund that...
HBO would love a show of that description :D
Sounds like a good punk band name.
Sold! You had me at Cher Nobyl.
This thing somehow manages to be even more insane than the one where you ride a constant chain of nuclear explosions on top of a giant steel plate
Power output: 14 Chernobyl/s
@Maylevka May Yup. The only real reason the research stopped on projects like Orion was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. I imagine the people working on it were very disappointed.
@@webbugt I feel like Chernobyls could be a new unit of measurement. Like horsepower, but for nuclear rockets
Considering it was created when Zubrin looked at Orion and thought to himself "That's not good enough", I'm not surprised.
@Maylevka May I remember reading a lengthy article about it. They weren't planning on using it for the booster. It would have only been ignited after reaching/leaving orbit.
"Ruin your day"
Early interplanetary humanity is going to be *LIT*
Hell yeah!
Course if that actually meant anything...
And thus was born humanity's improbable stone age stellar empire, built upon nothing but hubris and a love of things that go boom.
When it comes time to join the interstellar community, we may find that we're the Klingons.
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! As Astra!
I really don't wanna be that guy but Ares is the Greek name of the god of war, the Romans called him Mars so in Latin it would be 'Ad Mars!'.
The Imperium calls us, brother
Ad Astra Per Aspera
Klingons developed the photon torpedo and had a better understanding of warp factor than the Federation. No... if we go into space we may find ourselves being the Pakleds
"I went to Jupiter and back in 6 months, riding a continuous chernobyl-like atomic bomb". There won't be a more badass quote, ever. Period.
Well why not frase it like this:
I rode a atomic space chernobyl for 6 months to saturn and back
yeah but only girls go to Jupiter, and they do so to get more stupider, so idk if it's really that badass
A believe they call 'em Torchships
@@MrCrackbear what about pluto then?
@@outofcontext728 Would need a plutonium powered engine, obviously.
- So, is this a great idea or a terrible idea?
- Yes
Umm... like Henry Ford said, If You Think You Can, or You Think You Cant, You're Right.
This is a great idea 💡
This engine would need a disclaimer saying POINT AWAY FROM EARTH!
Not great not terrible...
"It's amazing how often those two things coincide."
"what if Project Orion but the explosion is continuous"
This
'What if Project Orion but better'
That actually was Zubrin's rationale for creating this
5:30 "this isn't your usual slow reaction"
i mean it's kinda to the nuke what a conventional rocket is to a bomb, right? like a nuclear runaway explosion that just keeps going with one end open
There would be no nuclear explosion.
To make a nuclear bomb, a special setup is required.
Yep. It is a very apt analogy.
That makes it even clearer
Project Orion: "Let's throw megaton-class nuclear bombs out the back and literally blow this thing to Mars."
NSWR: "Hold my beer."
"hold my brine"
"Hold my Gose". (For the beer nerds)
@@timd6468 I'm still not clear on what constitutes a gose. Are you implying it involves salt?
@@weatheranddarkness Gose is style of beer that is brewed with water that has unusually high salinity or has salt added.
The proposed Orion used much smaller explosions than that! More like kiloton, or a few kilotons.
He says “Fly Safe” while describing his magic nuclear bomb Chernobyl flying carpet...
No less safe than any naturally occurring radiation found in the cosmos. Life on earth has basked in the glow of a gigantic fusion bomb its whole history.
@@iasimov5960 Indeed... Radiation OUTSIDE the magnetosphere, Life INSIDE...
Launching rocket with a full load of 20%+ uranium in our sky is not an option. Failure probabilities are still too high. Even planes still crash a couple times a year.
Asteroid mining and refining in space is the only solution to this.
S.A.F.E.: Suicidal Atomic Fart Engine
+1. The feasibility of this thing is hugely outweighed by the long and painful development. How many of those nuke engines and rockets going to explode in Earth's atmosphere before they will safely fly in space?.
He put the stress on _SAFE_ , I noticed.
"Non stop Chernobyl".
Sounds like a name for a heavy metal band.
i had the same thoughts
Uranium is a heavy metal, I see what you did there...
I hear they drop new albums faster than the water level in an RBMK
they went home after a 20 minute set
"Relentless Chernobyl," maybe? "Ceaseless Chernobyl?"
Meanwhile at the Universal Atomic Energy Agency, the alien in charge of space decontamination just had all 4 of his hearts go into cardiac arrest.
Haha, if they want us to not do it, they better come down and give us warp drive quickly.
If that is giving it a hearts attack imaging it looking at what our sun puts out every second.
If he's going to worry about this, he'll feint when he gets wind of just how much radiation is the normal background in space.
@@TealJosh Give us a warp drive; or every ten minutes; we cause a galactic environmental catastrophe...
@K31TH3R "space decontamination?" I have to break it to you: space is literally filled with high energy cosmic rays and neutrons streaming off the sun.
"Open cycle nuclear reactor"
Well. This is it. Nothing will ever excite me as much as this. My ChE and NE nerding combine to this one horrendous, wonderful beast.
I've also seen proposals for an "autophagic nuclear solid rocket booster". Basically this, but as an SRB.
I know. I was a nuclear engineer but now retired so about 30 years too late for me.
Watch “the nuclear option” by Isaac Arthur, there are some serious designs that would be best used far from earth. Great stuff
Just be careful, or else it could become an Open-Open Cycle Nuclear Reactor
I prefer closed cycle, i.e. the nuclear lightbulb. Half as efficient, but you can use them to lift off from the surface of living worlds, and that's when you really need the high thrust anyway.
Phrases to leave out of the promotional materials, #431: "So it's a non-stop Chernobyl in space."
SpaceX has this problem already. They have to careful strip out all mentions of "belly-flop maneuver" and "suicide burns" when filing applications with the FAA.
@@ThePhiphler See also: Why the project is no longer called the Big F***** Rocket.
"...Chernobyl almost worked..." hehe
THANK YOU LOL FUCKING CHRIST WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
It's a non-stop *double* Chernobyl in space ;)
The fact that this genuinely feels like the beginning of stuff like this being taken so seriously and potentially being worked on in my lifetime alone is enough to make me happy during this rubbish pandemic times.
Love that a fellow jock is the go to space guy also btw 🤘🏼🏴
OK, the science says yes, the engineering says yes, and the mere fact that we're genuinely using units like "1% of the speed of light" makes me say Yes Yes Yes!
Another fascinating vid, Scott, many thanks.
(NB, can I nominate that the SI unit for 1% SoL be called the 'Manley'?)
"Dr Von Braun, let me introduce Dr Strangelove. Oh, you've worked together before?"
Jawohl! Hiz ideaz might zeem far flung but wir want to fling thingz far, ja? Further than ze London thiz time.
Hahahah. Both were in the SS
"Oh hi Wernher, I'm the new head of your engine design department. This idea is gonna blow you away!"
_looks at blueprints_ "Someone get me my Braun pants"
@@achtsekundenfurz7876 4⁴⁴
hahaha!! damn now I'm going to have to go rewatch this
When you look at it there goes another steam engine.
Nuclear steam engine...
This is TRUE steam punk!
!!
Water is just such a useful element.
When our descendants push a hole through reality to finally achieve FTL or explore other dimensions I am sure it will basically be a fancy steam engine.
@@emceeboogieboots1608 The steamiest
It's humbling that our advances in energy technology amount to finding more efficient ways to boil water. I was so amazed as a kid that we humans can harness the power of the atom and so dissapointed when learned how it's actually done. "It's just a kettle? Bleh!"
I'm not sure I like the idea of being inside a rocket that has nuclear explosions continuously going off behind me, but I do like the idea of going to other star systems in decades instead of millennia.
We should stop using cars and busses: the fossil fuel motors work by utilizing hundreds of thermobaric explosions per minute only a couple feet away from the passengers - generating enough energy to kill everyone inside the vehicle (and a few outside of it) every minute several times over. Certainly a scary idea.
Electric vehicles are out as well: the immense magnetic fields inside those motor coils would be enough to wipe someone's brain if applied directly. The amound of electric energy stored in those batteries (or retrieved from those overhead power lines in the case of trains and trams) would also be quite deadly.
If we can develop this technology to a point at which it becomes as safe as a diesel car - then I wouldn't care how much energy it is and how it is derived. So, go with your second thought... ;-)
If you wanna go anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, you can't go wrong exploding a bunch of shit behind you
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 Well, that system has the advantage of being passively stable. The worst form of drive failure that could happen is the drive plate dampers failing and the whole plate tearing off and falling away.
Meanwhile on Dr Zubrin's wild ride if your water isn't flowing fast enough the continuous nuclear explosion progresses backwards up the pipes into your fuel tank...
@@KonradTheWizzard horses, don't forget how a horse can kill with a single kick.
when you're inside a running conventional automobile there are chemical explosions continuously going off in front of you. it's not that different :D
"My father is a firefighter"
"Wow that's badass"
"Uh, my father it's a soldier then"
"Doesn't he fear death?"
"Pfft, my father rides atomic bombs to Jupiter and back every six or so months, and that's only the way he travels to his job"
I mean cars we run today mostly utilise literal dinosaur juice that's expired waaaayy long ago to spin some aerosol machineguns. As long as we build things we'll always be cool.
Rides a nonstop nucular explosion all the way to Jupiter.
thats how our parents got to school
😂😂
Metal AF
"There's a more powerful version, where instead of using reactor grade Uranium it uses WEAPONS grade uranium"
Because of course there is.
When you need to "hotrod" your reactor drive 😂
"hey, is that engine dual fuel rated?"
DON'T USE THE WRONG FUEL HOSE
What could possibly go wrong??? Sounds like a safe, secure plan to me! But, but what if the first stage rocket breaks down on ascent and this final stage spreads weapons grade nuclear material everywhere ...
@@ilikenicethings You'd source the uranium and water from asteroids.
@@ilikenicethings Theres a point at which we need to be ok with being less risk averse.
@@ilikenicethings You could put the uranium refinement plant in orbit and feed it with material from asteroids and comets. Practicly building your rocket in space as well helps with a lot of problems.
“It’s like Chernobyl but in space”
Space Chernobyl: in space soviet comrade gets you.
Chernobyl is space haha
and we know *everything* is better in space!
Yeah, that should be the title of a proposal to congress :D
Yea but the radiation from it would kill satellites so we could not watch the HBO mini series
From what I can tell, it's probably the motor that Tintin's rocket used :D
Inside the atmosphere?
I suppose Tintin's rocket commits mass genocide then
@@geryz7549 he is belgian noting new for the guy
@@geryz7549 IIRC the moon rocket also had conventional propulsion for launch into orbit.
@@anuvisraa5786
*XD*
Nah, Tintin's rocket was basically an NTR with holy frick levels of chamber temp owing to the handwavium calculite that Prof Calculus invented to line the fuel elements
The "fly safe" in the end sounded like a threat. 😬
"non-stop Chernobyl" ... "depending on how you do your math" ... "Fly safe!"
seems like another nuke plane than a rocket
I'd rather see the worlds supply of weapons grade nuclear material used in a space ship than a bomb.
Untill he rocket carrying all that fissible material in orbit has an accident and falls back to earth during ascent ,😅
@@luckyhendrix Bah. There's no 100% way to protect earth (or any given city on earth, for that matter). The best protection is always to diversify, get some of your assets out of the one basket.
Put hundred of kilos of uranium in a crew dragon capsule...the more secure capsule available...in a very secure container...
And build the prototypes of the motors on the future Moon bases...
BTW...in the future you can get the uranium o plutonium from mines on the Moon or from near asteroids...
You wont need to launch uranium from Earth...
@@luckyhendrix The Cassini probe already carried almost 30 kg (64 lbs) of Plutonium 238 so it was done before and there wasn't too much protest.
@@luckyhendrix No that wouldn't be a problem. U235 is much less dangerous than the plutonium used for other space missions.(if it just falls down without reakting)
But what will the russians do if there is an official announcment that the us launches a missile with enough fissile material to blow up a nation?
And how do you test such a engine? It can never run on earth due to the massive contamintion.......
The 90% enriched version is a warship drive. Not only does it have the sheer power to make the sorts of burns you might need while packing the mass of your offensive and defensive systems, it's also a weapon in its own right. Exhaust velocities in the thousands of KPS, AND it's radioactive as hell? The Kzinti Lesson says hi :P Plus, it's fuel efficient enough that if you're willing to settle for a "mere" 1,000 KPS of delta V, your tankage would be relatively small and easier to protect.
As I understood it from having read up a bit about this idea, the fuel tanks don't need to have boron (or other control rod material) inside them, though the tanks were made of a high-boron metal alloy, or at least a layer of boron in the tank walls. But the main way of preventing criticality occurring in the fuel tanks was simply geometry - the tanks would be made long and thin, with relatively large gaps between all the tanks, a bit like how nuclear reactor cores are made of lots of separate long thin fuel rods rather than one massive block of uranium. There would also be lightweight non-absorbent filler material in the gaps between the tanks to prevent the water pooling anywhere inside the whole structure in event of any tank springing a leak.
As to the chemistry, uranium tetrabromide seems like a bit of an odd choice to me - especially as a solution in water would be at least partially hydrolyzed into uranyl ions and hydrogen bromide, the latter making the solution strongly acidic. The only way to inhibit this hydrolysis would be to keep the pH low with another even stronger acid, so either way, uranium tetabromide solutions would be corrosive at the very least, as well as probably unstable. The sources I read mentioned using uranyl nitrate or plutonium nitrate: These make a lot more sense, since all nitrate salts are water soluble, the solutions are stable and not appreciably acidic, and can be made much more concentrated than bromide salts if necessary.
I think having the uranium salts mix with the water as needed is a better option than keeping tanks of "boom juice" around. May make ISRU more practical, sourcing water at least. Could save a lot of weight, too, as only the salt storage needs neutron poisons. Corrosion would affect less parts as well.
Would plutonium need to be isotopically enriched or depleted for the design to work? Or could it just be tailored to work best with the natural isotopic makeup of the plutonium in nuclear waste?
@@leerman22 would the salts now need to be separated by larger spaces or does the lack of moderating water make storage a lot easier?
@@Teboski78 Moderator reduces the fuel needed to go critical, so it would be safer keeping them separate.
@@Teboski78 As I understand it, isotopic enrichment only applies to uranium from the perspective of building a critical mass, since while U-238 is fissionable under fast neutron conditions, U-235 (naturally occurring at 0.7%) and U-233 (decay product from thorium) are the only fissile isotopes of uranium.
Plutonium is a different story entirely, since it doesn't occur naturally in any significant quantities, so all the known plutonium stocks in existence have been manufactured in reactor cores. More to the point, every known isotope of plutonium is fissile. Some of the heavier isotopes are even prone to spontaneous fission, without needing an external neutron source.
These slow buildup of these heavier isotopes sets a practical limit on how long you can leave U-238 breeding plutonium in a reactor: If you have too much of the spontaneous fission isotopes in your final plutonium, the risk of premature detonation becomes unacceptably high - especially for a production warhead!
"there's some things you can only really do in space"
"oh yeah, name on"
this.
To be fair you could do it on Earth too, but it's not really recommended.
@@dragonatorul I have a launch vehicle using this thing in a KSP save. I know its not healthy, but what about the profit?
Yeah, i was just thinking how the hell do you test this.
@@thomasmackay4 from a long way away I imagine 😂
@@thomasmackay4 somewhere you can seal it, or the moon
I like this concept and with that exhaust nobody will ever tailgate for long.
Well as stated by (I think Asimov), any propulsion system efficient enough to propel a starship can stand in as a weapon, just aim the exhaust at your enemy....
Slamming on the brakes takes care of tailgaters.
@@srenkoch6127 Larry Niven, actually. The Kzinti Lesson.
@@streetwind. I stand corrected :-)
@@srenkoch6127 If I remember correctly, it was about pointing the (interplanetary) communication system, a strategy used in the first encounter with the Kzin forces (as already stated by @Streetwind, in Larry's Niven universe).
5:05 this design is so insane, the entire fuel tank would have to contain some kind of Boron foam to absorb neutrons and as the graphic shows all the plumbing would also have to be filled with boron tubes
Or you’d have to dissolve uranium salt in some eutectic metal alloy so that uranium ion is always surrounded by dense liquid metal.
That design is crazy. Such a rocket engine would need to be designed to be much smaller so that the craft operates as a torch ship. Because even if you can only generate a small thrust, it changes life on board dramatically.
What is a torch ship?
Having read Zubrin's paper, there seems to be a pretty obvious show stopper in this design. Zubrin goes to great lengths to explain how a critical mass could be maintained in the cylindrical part of the engine(plenum) due to the fact that water is basically incompressible and would maintain a steady flow rate. But then he wants almost all the actual fission to happen in the nozzle where the propellant is more spread out and is no longer a critical mass. Because uranium atoms only release a limited amount of neutrons when they split there is simply no way to generate enough neutrons in the plenum to split the required number of uranium atoms in the nozzle, and if you had enough uranium in the nozzle where the propellant is spreading out to maintain a critical mass the plenum would go up like a bomb. Also you cannot heat the water in the plenum enough to turn it into steam, because then you have to take gas laws into effect where increased temperature requires either higher pressure(which would result in the flow going the wrong way), or increased flow speed as you go down the plenum, resulting in the critical mass being lost and the chain reaction ending even before you get into the nozzle.
Because heavier molecules such as water and uranium require a much higher temperature than straight hydrogen molecules to reach the same ISP, I am extremely skeptical that any attempt to build this design could actually reach the ISP levels of a nuclear thermal rocket, never mind the tens to thousands of km/s exhaust velocities Zubrin speculates about. I would love to be proved wrong, but this design seems to be a classic case of using math to get answers to a different question than you are actually asking.
I think you would want the water to remain as a liquid in the plenum both for reasons of hydrodynamic stability and to ensure that the exiting fluid is as supercritical (from a reactor kinetics standpoint not thermodynamic standpoint) as possible. A nuclear bomb suffers the same problem in that the reaction shuts down once the fuel expands beyond a certain point yet they get the job done. I think having multiple tanks/injectors focused on the same point in the combustion chamber would address your concerns, be safer snd allow for some degree of throttleability at the cost of some increased weight and complexity. While H2O is more massive than H2, the higher powers this concept offers is more than worth it. The mass of the salt itself is negligible, particularly is it fissions.
Does water even stay water at the temperatures we're talking about here? I would think the water molecules would very quickly break down into hydrogen and oxygen.
I think the biggest problem is that you would have to get all that nasty stuff into orbit in the first place. One failed start and we live in holes in the ground for the rest of the planets live.
@@demacherius1 That's ridiculous. You're massively overestimating the explosive power (assuming all the uranium concentrated during a launch explosion... which it would not) as well as the actual fallout. A launch failure would not be good by any stretch of the imagination. But practically it would be one of those, "caused 15 more cancers than expected over the next 20 years" type of things.
@@thewiirocks I wasn't actualy concerned about the explosion. I just dont think that it is a good thing to have Uranium spead over a massive area. Isn't that a problem ?
Hearing “1% the speed of light” is just...nuts. I can’t wrap my brain around that
no doubt 1% speed would be better than our current snails pace, we should be aiming higher though,
let's be downright ambitious and go for 5% 😁.
Crazy huh!?! Even just 1% of the speed of light could get you from New York City in New York to Tampa in Florida, AND BACK... in one second.
1% light speed is 1,860 miles per second... So London to New York in just under 2 seconds!
At the speed of light that same trip from London to New York would happen in just 19 milliseconds (nineteen one-thousandths of a second).
Easy to miss your stop. 🤣
@@subliminalvibes It's not the travel speed, it's the ship-relative exhaust speed. Should still be enough to accelerate beyond that speed.
@@subliminalvibes Think you are missing a couple of zeros in the speed. 🤦♂️ 😀
@@josephking6515 no he's not. speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. 1% of that - remove two zeroes. 1,860 miles per second. if you're going to be a pedant, at least be right.
I don’t want to imagine what a “hard start” would look like for this
How would you even throttle something like this?
@@TheVillainInGlasses Probably diluting the U salt concentration by mixing pure water in
@@TheVillainInGlasses probably by simply decreasing the amount of fuel flowing in. The engine would only be throttleable up to a certain point, below which the engine would flame out because there isn't enough fuel to maintain criticality. This could be overcome possibly by increasing the concentration of fissile material in the fuel as needed to keep the engines running at the lower throttle settings.
@@TheVillainInGlasses You can probably vary the amount of water being pumped in to a certain extent, while still keeping the reaction inside the nozzle. But if you set it up to create an average acceleration of 1G or so, there's really no need to throttle it.
@@TheVillainInGlasses change the pure water/ salt ratio or, more likely, adjust neutron emitters/ absorbers near the nozzle. Changing fuel flow isn't an option I think since you need constant fuel flow to stop reaction from going into the fuel line. Can also use electromagnets to divert plasma flow a bit, everything that goes to the side doesn't provide thrust.
I hold not an ounce of irony when I say: Ok this is epic
5:40 So they run it at melt down levels while pumping water through it so it all goes ZOOM instead of BOOM
No, they run it at nuclear explosion levels meltdown levels are too tame.
Basically, yes.
and hope they don't forget the Z
KSP 2: We're going to postpone the release one more time for the sake of continuous Kernobyl.
:) Most Kerbal enigne of all time :)
@@a64738 only second to the Orion drive :p
@@backyardretards5684 Actually, "riding a nuke stream" sounds mundane to "riding two non-stop chernobyls at once"
worth the wait honestly
You can also get the water flow rate to increase by simply restricting the flow cross section after the boron lined section of pipe, sort of like a venturi in a carburetor but with positive pressure at the inlet rather than positive pressure. You could even feed in a more concentrated nuclear fuel-water mix to better control the rate of reaction.
Scott Manley boosts my passion for hard sci-fi. Thanks
3:16 "This is obviously a technical challenge, but that's a whole nother video"
Okay so when is that coming?
30 years like fusion
No one seriously opened research on this.
No need - no progress - no estimates
@@foty8679 So more like 300?
@@foty8679 not to mention, that we have had fusion for many years, just not the ones that produces more energies than input.
"Non-Stop Chernobyl" is a great band name.
haha :)
I always thought a good one was ICBF. Intercontinental Ballistic Fist
I was researching advanced propulsion and I stumbled across a NASA archive of nuclear rocket designs, some of which were only a couple years old.
There’s a lot more brain power being put on this than we’re told about.
And, it’s probably for the better as we don’t want them to risk losing funding for NP
9:50 "it's like a non stop Chernobyl going on" well sign me up then
I'm in too; what could possibly go wrong?
@@nuclearmedicineman6270 You refuel with premium weapons grade propellant.
@@kazedcat Generates 1.21 gigawatts.
@@kazedcat Miss mars colony, end up in alpha centauri
"The Chernobyl Drive" is the way to the future. A future in space!
I love it! 😍
Proof of concept model in an upcoming episode? They left you with some uranium, right?
Are you still signed up to go to mars?
100% he DM Mark Rober for a project and started mining sum uranium
Cody is your video from a couple years ago still available that you dilute a poison with water and consume it?
@Cody'sLab I agree!!! this is an awesome idea, in that there is no hpyergolic ignition of the fuel required. And if they replace the water coolant of the nozzle with a well defined magnetic field passing through a ceramic nozzle then the water flow requirements would be much lower as well.
"Stage separation successful, Chernobyl thrusters ignition in t minus 10, 9, ..."
There's no need to hit the AZ-5 button this time, comrade.
hmm... I think if thr bigger thruster is called "KV2" because KV2 shoots nuke moare powerful than tsar bomba in paper
OMG! Someone finally referred to the Nevada Test Site as "Jackass Flats," it's correct name. Thank you, Scott.
Huh, didn't know that!
@@Walter-Montalvo Not for the whole site, just that part. Most of the nuclear testing was in Yucca Flats
*its
Great name for an apartment complex with a college student population and a constant supply of free ice beer.
@@ronaldgarrison8478, talk about a critical mass -- of stupid!
Funny enough, the first time I heard of the Orion project I did ask myself: why not use a constant explosion instead of individual ones?
Looks like somebody did think of that, 30 years ago.
Because its extremely difficult, because fission explosions are easy and very well known.
Peter, the thing you are missing is the idea of a continuous reaction. Instead of a handgrenade, which explodes as a single unit, think of a jar of gunpowder. Regardless of size of the gunpowder jar, it will burn and explode when ignited, but with a variation in intensity. The thing about nuclear chain reactions is, however, on stark contrast to chemical reactions that they follow an extremely nonlinear yield. While you could argue that pounds of TNT release about double of what one pound releases, a nuclear bomb of twice the Uranium might yield more then 10 times the explosive energy since it reacted much more material. Criticality is the most important measure. The idea here is to create an area in the engine bell in which there is enough fissable material present to create a runaway fission reaction, but also pump out the fuel fast enough to make sure this runaway reaction doesn't proper gate back into your tanks. Like a flamethrower that shoots out a stream of petrol, it would be very uncomfortable if the flame made it up the stream and into the tanks. Mediating the main propergation method of nuclear reactions, slow neutron density, is crucial here but can be achieved as Scott stated.
"I'm Scott Manley, explode safe 🚀🔥💥💥💥💥" xD
"Fly safe" seems less appropriate when discussing nuclear rockets
It's perfectly safe, just don't come within 100 kilometers of anything living, use a secondary shuttle to dock with stations, AND FOR KRAKEN'S SAKE STAY BEHIND THE SHADOW-SHIELD!
No. It is much more appropriate wish when riding a nuclear rocket.
Certain chillies have the same effect in my exhaust nozzle.
So when we do get to Mars, and meet you there, we've been warned. Take some grub, for the return trip.
Well now you know the answer, you need to install some jets of water to act as a buffer around your overly-energetic exhaust to prevent erosion of your nozzle. Please post a picture of your doctor's face if you ask for those to be installed.
Classic !!🤣
@@johnladuke6475 theres people on facebook that offer that service
Good, you don't need a jetpack
"It's like Chernobyl but in space"
Chernobyl: Am I getting a sci fi sequel?
Antimatter matters
Chernobyl 2: Outer Space Boogaloo
@@quentinking4351 Chernobyl 3: mars is gone
@sadi muntakim Chernobyl 5: we fucked it up more and we turned the sun into a red star with the mass of 100 million normal suns
5:50 - "Liquid Chernobyl" has a nice ring to it.
Is name of Taco Bell food next morning
This is actually a viable Torchship.... quick tell ELON about it.
If he even mentioned this, I can’t imagine the clickbait arrival titles that would quickly follow 😂
Mabey wait until he’s safely on Mars to give him ideas about continuous Chernobyl rocket tech.
> This is actually a viable Torchship
A shame that Heinlein never had children to see that.
Seriously, what is the purpose of all that swapping that he and Ginny did if not to guarantee offspring?
Elon has openly said they are not interesting in researching experimental propulsion systems. He basically said they wouldn't even invest in aerojet rocket engines till NASA does it first. They are in the business of bringing the cost down and getting government delays out of space programs, not redefining space travel. You can argue reusing rockets yes but NASA has always said that was viable and never did it.
@@Skylancer727 yep, he's a businessman willing to try some risky things, and while he's a bit of a visionary at times when it comes to the amount of stuff in space in the near future (but more of a bulk and low cost approach than a new tech approach); he's still a businessman at the end of the day. The genius imo of things like starship and the methane/LOX full flow staged combustion engines is that it's taking existing materials knowledge and trying something new, and a new approach to launch with it, so it can be physically prototyped and tested for speedy development instead of potentially nearly a century of R&D for completely new propulsion tech, which NASA is in a better position to work on. Good to see someone else who finally understands the (hopeful) continuing relationship of commercial spaceflight and NASA and the role they both have to play in our wonderful future! 🚀🌌🤩😁
The specific impulse figure is so insane, it’s got to be done! Space here we come!
Nyoom
here we come (in tiny radioactive pieces)
@@grproteus We are already tiny radioactive pieces, we are made of the products of thermonuclear reactions already. It is trivial to build shielding between the engine and passenger compartment on such a spaceship as this, and the fuel "tank" will do this for us anyway.
"comes from solar panels soaking up the sun"
Phrased like that it sounds like solar panels are some kind of doomsday device.
I mean they are stealing some of the sun's energy...
Or maybe the panels are spending a week at an all-inclusive beach-side resort?
Well, if you were a paper towel maker, "soaking up" and "blotting out" are basically the same thing...
Well if you put enough solar panels at L1, you can literally take away the Earth's sunlight and doom it to freeze to death, so... Yeah.
The way some people talk about nuclear power you'd think that is what solar panels are doing.
We used to sail across the Atlantic with just the wind and we look at these people with sails like future generations are looking at us being creative with gravity assists.
Sailing didn't leave a wake of radioactive waste behind it.
@@fallinginthed33p the radiation in space will be almost nothing, will shoot out of the solar system very quickly besides.. space is full of radiation.
Thermal taps from the external reaction could literally power the rest of the ship. Why let all that radio active energy go to waste?
You'd still need to power it somehow when the engine is off. But that sounds like a relatively minor problem.
@@Rickenbacker69 batteries
@@Rickenbacker69 When the main engines are shut down a standard fission reactor could take over powering the ship.
@@killman369547 That would be too heavy. You probably don't need that much power to begin with.
Maybe take a small amount of the fuel and let react or near reaction under control and use it for power
Okay, that was a cool video. This is the first time I can remember in my life feeling like anything measured in light years distant maybe worth paying attention to.
Yep. Scientists often look at and talk about distant galaxies and stars and I've really started to think, who cares.
It's all too far away to ever be reachable so all the theories will remain as theoretical with no way to prove the reality.
Feels like they should just concentrate on our solar system as that's all we will ever be able to get too.
@@youtubevanced4900 The technology described in this video aside, those distant galaxies aren't even observable on a planetary scale, let alone reachable! That's what's really making me uninterested. They could be teeming with life and we would never know or be able to communicate and make ourselves known outside of multigenerational efforts. If there is truly a technology to bring these distances into our capacity to bridge, then they'll have my attention.
I would suggest the channel isaac aurthor. He does science and futurism.
I will still say, however, that anything 100+ light-years away is ridiculous to get excited about when media says "potentially Earth-like planet!"
@Maylevka May Theorise their composition. Without actually testing them directly they won't know for certain.
As a professional nuclear rocket scientist, I approve this message.
Scott Manley is the one youtube channel I'm still coming back to after years and years. You're always relevant. Because space travel will always be relevant.
Our favorite new rocketry phrase "engine-rich exhaust" keeps coming to mind as I think about the possible test runs of such an engine.
I mean, you are basically venting your reactor core into the environment by design.
NSWR: the closest we could get to interplanetary torches in any near future vehicles. Also extremely scary.
Orion though. Mini-Mag Orion though...
@@badbeardbill9956 possible, but mini mag faces challenges yet to be solved
Just don't stand behind it too close, like 50 miles?
Scary only to those who don't understand nuclear reactions. This is not a bomb. If used in space, the radiological hazards are insignificant, especially when things like solar flares and CME's can fry you far more easily. It is a mark of ignorance to fear something you don't understand. The US Navy has used nucelar power for decades without a serious accident. Nuclear power, applied properly and with respect for its power, is nothing to be afraid of.
If we are ever to leave this planet, nuclear energy of some kind will be the way we do it. Chemical propulsion is too impractical for interplanetary travel to say nothing of interstellar travel.
@@ThePrisoner881 The scary part is the tank that store all those salt water propellant. If something happens to you neutron absorbent lining. You have a spaceship size nuke.
Have done a presentation at a Sci Fi convention about these drives. They're my favourite "You think NERVA rockets are scary? What to you get a load of one of THESE babies!" rockets.
feels like something from alien invasion movie when they stole our sea water for their ship fuel
Oblivion was the film.
The Jupiter Theft by Donald Moffitt explored the concept, with a fleet of aliens entering orbit around Jupiter and stealing the planet to use it as a fuel depot for the next leg of their journey.
also Battle Los Angeles (2011)
Although practically, they'd steal Ceres - virtually non-existent gravity well and a lot more water than all of earth's oceans combined
I bet in my lifetime we'll have a nuclear version of the Titanic or Hindenburg on a trip through the Astroid belt to Mars
Marketing department: Erm .... May I suggest we pick different names for the space craft... just you know ... for the brochures.
To be fair if they're in the asteroid belt, on a trip to Mars, I'm pretty sure they need a new astrogator
@@Artemis0713 The plot thickens by the minute! It's like a nuclear pudding. :-D
@@PotentiallyAndy no, they’re picking those names for a reason. It seems like a risk worth taking until it isn’t
Not necessarily - they could've gotten therebfirst to gather water, iron and radioactive ores to build the steff they'll use in the actual descent to Mars. It'd be way cheaper to source materials from the asteroids than to ship it from Earth
"the majority of the reaction will happen where you want it to"
... and the small minority will be occurring where?
It's best not to think about that, and just learn to live with extra limbs.. or possibly superpowers.
Everywhere else around you.
live and let live, dont question it.
likely in the portion of the pipe just before the primary reaction zone
@@nuclearmedicineman6270 Username checks out?
All I can see is Yosemite Sam: "Woe ship, WOE SHIP! when ah say's WOE, Ah means WOE!" :o)
I like this. And a big old cartoon mallet.
Whoa.
@@exidy-yt Thanks. Sam " Ah hates when that happens" ( see years of watching Loony tunes has no lasting side effects :o)
Hilarious! Shame most of the folks here in the comments have likely never spent a Saturday morning watching Looney toons
@@dannybell926 This channel? I am pretty sure it's viewership skews older then most channels. I'll bet alot of viewers recognize it. I grinned, even as I pedantically corrected the OP's spelling. ;-)
Why did the usual "fly safe" sound so ominous?
If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.
True. It seems the most amazing things humans do, most often, come from the craziest things we do.
I'm pretty sure this is crazy either way.
Computers are just rocks that we put lightning into. Still crazy.
The internet is sending lightning between rocks so they all blink in a way that we like. Still crazy.
If it’s crazy and it works, it’s not KAABOOOOOMMMM !!!
If it's crazy and it works, it's still crazy, you just got lucky.
This is my favorite card in High Frontier.
Also it's the opposite of "flying safe..."
Yes, because its simply better than anything
"What's more crazy than getting into space by sitting on an explosion?"
"Hear me out, how about... sitting on a NUCLEAR explosion?"
actually it's not quite an explosion but rather a continuous meltdown
So essentially, not only is your fuel hypergolic, it's a fission bomb.
Nah. A bomb uses fast neutrons. This is more like a nuclear deflagration than a detonation... though ofc sent through a rocket nozzle
But why can't a fission reaction be used to make a fusion rocket?
@@jamesdyhouse2490 I am probably wrong, but I think there is a group working on a z-pinch drive where you spit out D-D pellets and z-pinch them to criticality as they eject. Is that kind of a pulse fusion version of this?
@@jamesdyhouse2490 u are dumb fission and fusion is the exact opposite
@@jamesdyhouse2490 Yes, and to use heavy water instead of simple water =)
Gas core engines remain my favorite nuclear engines. A perfect example of some designer going, "The math says it works," followed by an engineer screaming.
Just eject the ones that refuse to work on it, in space no one can hear them scream.
I'm so on board with this both figuratively and literally.
I love reaching the end of Scott Manley videos still oblivious to the topic being covered. Such an unbounded feeling.
4:30 Sounds like a Plainly Difficult disaster video in the making. "Im going to rate this subject here, 10, on my patented disaster scale..."
The problem will be showing where the disaster occurred on the map!
If and when we manage to have an industrial capacity on the Moon, that would be a nice project to develop up there, far away from our atmosphere.
The great problem is that we couldn't try the engine in the atmosphere. Maybe with a settled moon base, we could prototype it there
You could build a small version into water and other things which should be able to manage it.
Nuclear thermal propulsion might become relatively popular on Mars. Given it has little atmosphere and a fairly severe radiation environment it might be quite practical. It doesn't require any oxidiser to make thrust.
Janik Bily even if it did go wrong it wouldnt do much to the moon
@@zoidberg444 eh, the radiation on mars is mainly from space. Radioactive particles that you can bring through an airlock could be a different matter entirely.
@@dynamicworlds1 Yeah, you wouldn't track most of the space radiation in through the airlock on your shoes (the exception being whatever radioisotopes were created by cosmic ray bombardment, but that isn't very much). You WOULD track nuclear salt water rocket waste in through the airlock on your shoes.
"Dave, I sense a malfunction in the fuel pump of the saltwater engine. Can you go check that out?"
"Open the pod bay door, Hal."
"sorry Dave, I can't do that"
I understood that reference... *Captain America pointing*
I’ve seen Jaws. I know salt water in the fuel is a bad thing.
"Sounds fun! Doesn't it?" - Scott Manley 2021 about a "controlled" continuous runaway nuclear reaction
Another great video!
finally, a video explaining one of the strangest and maddest propulsion systems ever
I'd like to order two.
Me too.
I feel like spending a video talking about driving a spacecraft with a continuous nuclear explosion should not be ended with "fly safe" as the tagline.
But it is, as long as it isn't confined to a planet
Seems to me like it would be more important now than ever XD
7:55
Anyone else remember having to bomb your way up out of that pit in Metroid?
Grenade Hopping in Marathon for me
Quake rocket jumps.
"it's a non stop chernobyl going on"- sounds great!
The speeds settings should nick named Cherno Alpha, Cherno Bravo, and then Chernobyl
Light speed, Ludicrous speed,.....
and thanks to Elon,.... plaid. 😁👍
Scott Manley: "Fly Safe".
Valery Legasov: "Oh that's perfect. They should put that on our money!"
Last time I was this early people were still excited about SLS.
So never existed?
@@berk_yasik_69 hello fellow sls hater
Haha
Hating on SLS is cringe. If you like space you should be excited about all rockets
@@clancy5600 You can love rockets and space yet understand the issues with a tax payer funded rocket nobody no project needs
I really appreciate the time you spent on the animation. It's pretty
are you referring to the game ?
@@machineball The flow in the nuclear saltwater engine.
Robert Zubrin, I remember watching his theory's on Mars missions years ago.
Zubrin is like Elon Musk, but without the money.
They actually worked together in the Mars Society. Elon broke off to continue his exploits uninhibited. He still speaks at the annual conferences.
@@RCAvhstape
And Zubrin is without money, because he doesn't think about money.
Kinda ironic, because his Mars 1.0 concept called for a "cheap" mission to Mars. And compared to other concepts it actually was.
But for Mars 2.0 he suddenly wants a "Mini-Starship" because of some fuel calculations, completely ignoring the fact that the development of such a mini Starship would likely be *much* higher that shipping a slightly bigger fuel factory to Mars.
I have to say I think Zurbin lost his vision in the last ~10 years. He want's to stay relevant with his mission concepts at all cost. What Musk does with Starship makes about everything obsolet what Zubrin has ever published.
As a resident of Brevard county that lives only a few miles away from kennedy, I do appreciate you mentioning that, that will not be a first stage. I'm quite content with the amount of limbs I was born with. Not too keen on growing any from radioactive mutation lol.
Underrated comment
If this thing did launch from Kennedy we wouldn't be discussing extra limbs, we'd be discussing extra tumours and getting your affairs in order
As much as I like the idea, I'll definitely have to NIMBY this one.
Unless you live in space, that shouldn't be a problem for the immediate future.
What?
You don't like having radioactive saltwater sprayed everywhere?
That's why we need to build a moonbase so we can launch deep space missions from there.
It would never be used in-atmosphere. This is a non-issue.
Now, actually building one that works? That's the issue.
@@MediocreHexPeddler Before it's in space, it's on earth, and we have to get it to space. You might not ignite this engine in the atmosphere, but you still will have a tank with thousands of tons of highly radioactive material atop of a common chemical rocket being carried through the atmosphere. Chemical rockets sometimes explode, which makes this a really really bad idea. Now if you somehow manage to find water - and more importantly highly enriched uranium out there in space - go nuts. But as long as you have to hoist that shit through our atmosphere, NIMBY indeed.
”A drive’s capability as a weapon is directly proportional to its capability as a drive”
- The Expanse