A nuclear thermal propulsion rocket engine, which uses what is called centrifugal liquid fuel, adds to the possibilities for faster travel through deep space. Under a research contract with the Space Nuclear Propulsion Project Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) is leading a collaboration of American universities to explore the concept of thermal propulsion.
NASA has already made significant progress toward solid fuel NTP design. The bubbling concept under study is one of three proposed hydrogen-based designs for a new-generation liquid fuel NTP rocket.
The bubbling centrifugal NTP concept heats the hydrogen propellant to very high temperatures, but no combustion takes place. Hydrogen literally bubbles up into a rotating liquid uranium core in the engine through a porous cylinder wall, causing the gas to expand rapidly. As it emerges from the nozzle, the expanding hydrogen provides thrust for the spacecraft.
Advantages of the design include significantly better performance than conventional liquid fuel rocket engines that burn hydrogen and oxygen, explains Dr. Dale Thomas, the project’s principal investigator and a leading systems engineer at the UAH. “In conventional combustion of liquid fuel engines, the resulting propellant molecules, H2O in the case of hydrogen and oxygen, are much heavier because of those relatively heavy oxygen atoms, and they will not come out of the nozzle as quickly, giving more thrust but less impulsiveness,” explains he naked.
Thrust is the force the engine provides to lift a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s gravity, for example. Momentum is the change in momentum per unit of fuel, and that matters when it comes to getting a ship to a particular destination in space. Conceptually intriguing, the bubbler engine presents a number of technical challenges, including developing a porous cylinder wall material that can withstand direct contact with molten uranium fuel.
“We are in the early stages of this,” explains Dr. Thomas. “This concept of bubbling has been around since the 1960s,” he notes. “Physics is well understood, but technical challenges have prevented this concept from getting off the drawing board in the past. We are trying to see if current technologies will allow us to develop a viable prototype liquid fuel NTP engine.”
UAH’s work focuses on three areas, he says. “The first part is the thermodynamic modeling and analysis of heat transfer from liquid uranium and gaseous hydrogen. Second, we will model and analyze the geometry and trajectory of gaseous hydrogen bubbles in a liquid uranium medium, and third, we will conduct experiments to confirm the analytical predictions of the dynamic and thermodynamic models.”
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
