Re: Fission Powered Space Travel

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

I suggest contacting Dr. Mohammed El-Genk at the University of New Mexico,
department of Nuclear Engineering.  He has been researching this area for
some time.  He also puts on a conference on this subject every year.

Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: JPreisig@aol.com <JPreisig@aol.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Friday, January 05, 2001 11:17 PM
Subject: Fwd: Fission Powered Space Travel


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>From: JPreisig@aol.com
>Full-name: JPreisig
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>Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:55:40 EST
>Subject: Fission Powered Space Travel
>To: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
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>Greetings,
>
>From:  jpreisig@aol.com
>
>     Hi to John Miller, Marie Miller, Tom LaBone, Nisy Ipe, Kevin
Nelson,etc.
>
>
>     The notion of fission powered space travel is quite interesting,
>although I'm
>sure the general public would still be terrified to see it in practice.
>     The jump from chemical propellants to fission-based propulsion clearly
>brings one from eV energies to MeV energies, thus allowing travel times
from
>(and to) Mars to be reduced from 2 years to roughly 2 weeks.  I think
travel
>times less than 2 weeks would not be good for the astronauts.
>
>     In the last few years, on television I've seen a program about a
>gas-cooled
>fission reactor, with fuel consisting of uranium (???) enclosed in
spherical
>ceramic pellets.   It was a German-American research effort (involving some
>fellow named Krueger and others).  The reactor cooling was switched off,
and
>for several days the fuel was allowed to heat up.  The heating increased
>but eventually did not cause structural problems with the fuel geometry.
>Thus,
>the reactor was stable against some sort of cooling turn-off "accident".
>I believe such a reactor would be a reasonable fission propulsion unit,
>providing
>it was efficient enough to get the job done.  It might even be good enough
>to be the fundamental design unit for future U.S. power reactors, if we
ever
>start building them again (even just as replacement reactors for the
reactors
>that are moving out of service in the next 10-20 years).
>
>     Does anyone know more about this reactor research effort, and if the
>work
>is still in progress???
>
>     Eventually, the folks at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) may
get
>the NSTX (National Spherical Torous eXperiment) to become small enough to
>be placed on a spacecraft, for use as a fusion propulsion drive.  Check out
>the
>PPPL web page for details on the NSTX,  They've come a long way from
>donut shaped Tokomaks (i.e. the TFTR).
>
>    See you on the space station....Honest!!!!!
>
>
>                                                       Joseph R. Preisig,
>Ph.D.
>
>
>
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