7/27/2019 rocket efficiency – Liquid Rocket Engines (J-2X, RS-25, general)

Liquid Rocket Engines (J-2X, RS-25, general)

Tag: rocket ef ciency

Inside the LEO Doghouse: Nuclear

Thermal Engines

Perhaps it’s a Midwestern thing, I don’t know.  I grew up outside Chicago (although
my family is mostly all from back east) so that’s where my theory originates
regarding it being a Midwestern thing.  After all, when I was growing up, nobody
around me seem to think that it was odd so my assumption is that they all – we all –
pronounced it this same way:  “new-que-lar.”  It was only later, when removed
from the wayward in uences of my isolated rustic upbringing was it pointed out to
me – sometimes amidst unsuppressed laughter – that the word is spelled “n-u-c-
l-e-a-r”.  Or, in other words, it is pronounced: “new-clear.”  Okay, so, whatever.

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If I’m talking about ‘nuclear this’ or ‘nuclear that,’ what’s shown in the picture
above is probably what popped into your head.  And that’s fair.  This is the way that
nuclear power most commonly impacts our daily existence, i.e., through the light
switches and electrical outlets in our houses that are ultimately traceable back to a
power plant, some of which are based on nuclear ssion reactors.  Below are a
couple of other applications of nuclear power with which we are familiar.

Okay, so what does this have to do with rockets?  Well, there are ways to use nuclear
power to create rocket propulsion.  And, by the way, this is not some newfangled
idea out of the blue.  Did you know that one of the original plans for the third stage
of what would become the Saturn V rocket was for that stage to use nuclear-thermal
propulsion?  That plan was eventually dropped and a con guration using a J-2
engine was chosen instead, but going all of the way back to the late 1950’s people
were thinking of ways to use the extraordinary power of nuclear ssion to enable
and enhance space exploration.

There are two basic classes of rockets that use nuclear ssion.  One is called
“nuclear-electric” and the other is called “nuclear-thermal.”  In a nuclear-electric

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rocket, you use the reactor to generate electricity (like a small power plant) and then
use that electricity to make high-velocity ions.  The latter portion of the sequence is
called “ion propulsion” and there are di erent schemes and ideas out there, some of
which have been used on unmanned spacecraft in the past using other sources for
electrical power.

Nuclear-electric propulsion is extremely e cient.  In the past we’ve talked about

speci c impulse being a measure of rocket e ciency.  Well, a nuclear-electric
propulsion system is on the order of ten or twenty times more e cient than your
typical high-performance liquid hydrogen / liquid oxygen chemical propulsion
rocket such as J-2X or RS-25.  BUT (and this is a really, really big “but”), for all that
e ciency, they don’t generate much thrust.  AND they are very heavy.  Thus, the
only place where using nuclear-electric propulsion makes any sense is in space. 
Even there in “weightless” space, the extremely low thrust-to-weight ratio means
that this propulsion system is only appropriate for missions where you’re willing to
be very patient and get to wherever you’re going quite slowly.  That’s not really an
appropriate approach for missions with humans on board.

The other class of nuclear power rocket engines, and the one that I really want to tell
you about, is nuclear-thermal rockets.  It is appropriate that we discuss nuclear-
thermal rockets in an article immediately following an article discussing expander
cycle engines since they are actually closely related.  Almost cousins.  Below is a
schematic for a nuclear-thermal rocket in the same general format as the various
expander cycle engines were shown in the previous article.

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What you don’t have here is any oxidizer.  Why?  Because there is no combustion.  In
a normal rocket engine we use fuel and oxidizer in a chemical reaction to create hot
combustion products.  It is the ejection of those hot combustion products generate
the engine thrust.  For a nuclear-thermal rocket engine we use the reactor to make
the hot stu .  You can think of the reactor, when operating, as a really, really
powerful heat source, even more powerful than a chemical reaction.  Thus, I can use
that heat source to generate turbine drive gas, just as in an expander cycle engine,
and I can also use that heat source to make the hot gas that generates the engine
thrust.  In terms of con guration, the reactor has built into it ow passages where
the fuel picks up heat as it goes along.  These passages can be along the outside,
which I’ve shown here as feeding the turbine, and they are throughout the innards
of the core.  There are di erent ways of accomplishing this.  One way is to make
extrude the core rods with passages – “coolant channels” – through the length of
the rods.  This is shown in an old sketch from the NASA archives below.  Another way
to achieve this is to make the core out of pellets or “pebbles” trapped in little cages. 
Doing this, you’d get what’s called a “pebble-bed reactor” and such a con guration

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provides for lots and lots of heat exchange surface area between the core pellets and
the working uid owing through.

So, what’s the “fuel” in the rocket schematic, i.e., the working uid shown in red? 
The typical answer is hydrogen.  One of the reasons that we use hydrogen in a
chemical engine is because when we run fuel-rich, we get lots of hot, unreacted
hydrogen as part of the exhaust.  Hydrogen is very light.  When it gets hot and
energetic – and hydrogen picks up heat wonderfully – it moves very fast.  If you
think back to the rocket equation, fast moving exhaust means high performance.  In
this case for the nuclear-thermal rocket, the exhaust is pure hydrogen, so
performance can be quite high.  How high?  Well, it’s not as high as the nuclear-
electric options discussed above, but speci c impulse values two times that of J-2X
or RS-25 are entirely plausible.  Further, despite the fact that nuclear-thermal
engines are quite heavy, their thrust-to-weight ratio is generally much better than
the nuclear-electric options.  In other words, a nuclear-thermal engine has some
good “oomph,” enough oomph to make it potentially usable for human space ight. 
And that’s why it was seriously contemplated in the earliest planning for the
mission to the moon over fty years ago.  That’s also why, in my humble opinion, it
is a prime candidate for any future human mission to Mars.

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As mention above, this is not a new idea.  It reaches all of the way back to the 1950’s. 
There was a series of active programs all throughout the 1960’s falling under the
general heading of NERVA, Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application.  Below is
a picture of an actual test of one of these engines.

So, with all this history behind us and with all this potential for performance, why
on earth haven’t we been pursuing this technology rst and foremost?  Because,
well, nothing is free and nothing is ever as easy as it seems at rst.

The biggest struggle with nuclear-thermal rockets is that whole radiation thing. 
Okay, yes, I said it.  Radiation is bad.  Deadly.  And very long-lasting.  While rocket
engines of any type always pack a punch in terms of power density and, therefore,
the possibility for catastrophe, with the added spice of radiation, you’ve got quite
the potential for a noxious stew.  Does this mean that we ought to simply avoid it
altogether?  That’s a valid question and one that’s been debated for about 50 years. 
It would be presumptuous of me to suggest that I could resolve the issue
de nitively, but we can discuss the constituent elements rather than just falling
back on the “radiation is scary” answer.

First, let’s talk about whether it could be used on a vehicle.  The reactor is going to
generate radiation.  Internally, that’s how it works and that radiation in di erent

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forms over ows the boundaries of the reactor.  It just does.  So, what do you do? 
Well, you provide shielding.  The truth is that space is chock full of radiation.  If not
for our little pocket of safety thanks to the magnetic poles of planet earth, we’d be
cooked to the crisp by the radiation pouring out of the sun.  When you’re in space,
particularly if you’re going beyond our little planetary pocket of safety and traveling
to the moon or to Mars, you’re going to get bombarded by radiation so no matter
what, shielding is necessary.  Shielding is heavy because in order for it to be
e ective, you need big, heavy molecules to catch gamma rays (my very simplistic
explanation).  Lead and tungsten are two common shielding materials for this
purpose.  With a ssion reactor, you are also going need something for neutron ux
moderation.  The typical material for this is Lithium Hydride but the propellant tank
itself containing hydrogen also works well for this.

A means for minimizing the weight impact for the shielding used to protect the
astronauts from the reactor radiation is to use the notion of a shadow.  In the sketch
below, you have a reactor on the back end of the vehicle, a shield in between, and the
spacecraft up front.  Between, connecting everything and not shown, would be the
propellant tank and the usual shiny structural trusses.  As you can see, the shielding
creates a shadow from the radiation within which the spacecraft sits.  Now, it’s not
always this simple because you sometimes need holes through the shield for
functional reasons or you could get re ected/scattered radiation e ects from
structural elements, but this is the most common general scheme for dealing with a
reactor on a spacecraft.  Stick the reactor out a ways from everything, place the
shield close, and cast a long, broad shadow.

Okay, you say, you’ve protected the astronauts, great.  But what about the six or
seven billion people back here on planet earth?  After all, in order to re up a

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nuclear-thermal rocket in space you rst have to get it into space and that means
that you have to launch it from the surface of the planet.  Launch always involves
risk.  What happens if the launch vehicle blows up?  If the launch vehicle blows up,
then the reactor blows up.  Wow.  Now, how dangerous is that?  I will not pretend
that I can answer that question with my limited background.  But I can tell you that
prior to and during launch, the reactor is “cold.”  While you probably wouldn’t want
to use enriched uranium to make wallpaper for your house, it’s not that horri cally
dangerous prior to use in an active reactor.  It is only after the reactor gets going
that the innards get all juiced up and seriously radioactive.  The plan would be to
launch the reactor never having been “juiced up” and only start it when it is at a safe
distance from earth thereby eliminating as much as possible the potential of reentry
of a hot, radioactive reactor into the atmosphere.

[Note that the fact that you need something like tungsten for a shield (very heavy
metal) and you’ve got bundled up uranium in your reactor (another even heavier
metal) are big reason as to why a nuclear-thermal rocket engine is typically so
heavy as compared to a chemical rocket engine.]

The next issue to deal with for a nuclear-thermal rocket is probably one of the most
di cult: testing.  On the one hand, we’ve got lots of places where we can test
rockets.  On the other hand, we have certain places where we test reactors (mostly
under the expert supervision of the Department of Energy in coordination with the
U.S. Navy).  But putting those two pieces together and playing with them as a unit,
now that’s really tough.  Why?  Because of that darn radiation thing again.

After a typical J-2X or RS-25 test, after we’ve cleared residual propellants and bled
away any excessive pressures, we’ve got technicians all over those engines.  They’re
inspecting this, examining that, taking things apart, putting them back together. 
The whole point of a development program is to get data and a lot of that data comes
in the form of post-test inspections.  With a nuclear-thermal rocket, that wouldn’t
be possible unless you really, really didn’t like your techs (please note that’s not
serious, just a joke in poor taste).  Once the reactor has been red up, it’s hot.  Yes,
you can dial it back down so that it’s no longer at fully throttle, but both it and the
surrounding stu are contaminated to some extent with radiation.  And you don’t
just wipe radioactivity away with a damp rag.  After that rst initiation of self-
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sustaining chain reaction (i.e., “critical”), everything needs to be handled very

di erently.  Also, in addition to this, the hydrogen working uid that we push
through the reactor, it too picks up some level of radiation.  No, not a lot.  But under
modern safety restrictions, all of that hydrogen would have to be captured and
scrubbed clean before release.  Capturing rocket exhaust is not an easy job.  It’s
possible but it requires some extraordinary test facility capabilities.

With all this di culty, how can we conceive of getting through a development
program?  A rocket engine development program requires testing because, frankly,
we are demonstrably not smart enough to do without it.  One answer:  Split the
engine into two pieces.  If you do the rocket part separate from the reactor part, then
you can keep the two pieces blissfully in their natural environments, i.e., the rocket
part on NASA test stands and the reactor part in the Department of Energy labs. 
Focusing on the rocket side (not surprising for me, eh?), the di culty then becomes
in simulating the heat source that is the reactor.  There has been some work done
here at NASA MSFC at creating reactor simulators speci cally for the purpose of
testing subsystem separate from reactors whether those subsystems are rocket
engines or power generation systems.  Below is a picture of one such reactor
simulator.

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In this manner you can minimize or possibly even eliminate for the combined
rocket/reactor testing that is so di cult to pull o .

Before nuclear-thermal rockets can be used on missions of the future, there are a
number of challenges to overcome, but the potential gains in vehicle and mission
performance are impressive.  While this topic doesn’t fall entirely within the realm
of liquid rocket engines consistent with the title of this blog, I thought that the
similarity of the schematic to expander cycle engines would be of interest.  In this
case, rather than a chemical reaction, you have nuclear ssion, yet the engine cycle
is still a matter of driving a uid into a place where it gets hot and, from there, is
ejected at high velocities.  In this way, a rocket is a rocket is a rocket, even if it is
“nu-que-lar.”

June 30, 2014 / Liquid Rocket Engines / expander cycle engines, ion propulsion, J-2X, nuclear ssion,
nuclear power, nuclear-electric, nuclear-thermal, nuclear-thermal propulsion, rocket ef ciency, RS-25
/ 16 Comments

Liquid Rocket Engines (J-2X, RS-25, general)

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