Schematic of a nuclear-powered spacecraft for interstellar travel.
The British Space Agency is working with Rolls-Royce, a well-known aero-engine manufacturer, to study nuclear-powered spaceship engines. If successful, the flight to Mars will take half the Time of the current spacecraft.
The project hopes to use nuclear-powered engines to allow astronauts to reach Mars in three or four months. A nuclear-powered spacecraft could be twice as fast as today’s compound-fueled spacecraft engines. The team expects this to be an achievable goal in the next five to 10 years, and will significantly increase humanity’s ability to explore space.
The British government announced the creation of the project, saying it would “revolutionize space travel. The project team is made up of experts from a variety of fields, including planetary scientists and nuclear power experts, to develop a spacecraft engine powered by the massive energy released by the splitting of atomic nuclei.
Rolls-Royce has been supplying nuclear-powered submarine technology to the British Royal Navy for about 60 years. The company is also considering building several small nuclear-powered reactors on the ground to provide back-up support for British power.
This is not the first plan to consider building a nuclear-powered spacecraft. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. tested nuclear-powered spacecraft inside the Nevada desert, a project that was canceled in 1971.
In recent decades, several other U.S. nuclear-powered space development projects have been underway. Last year, the U.S. government announced a new policy outline to advance NASA’s nuclear energy development.
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