Soviet and American scientists have been developing nuclear rocket engines since the middle of the 20th century. These developments have not progressed further than prototypes and single tests, but now the only rocket propulsion system that uses nuclear energy is being created in Russia. "Reactor" studied the history of attempts to introduce nuclear rocket engines.
When humanity had just begun to conquer space, scientists faced the task of providing energy spacecraft. Researchers drew attention to the possibility of using nuclear energy in space, creating the concept of nuclear rocket engine. Such an engine was supposed to use the energy of fission or fusion of nuclei to create jet thrust.
In the USSR already in 1947, work began on the creation of a nuclear rocket engine. In 1953, Soviet experts noted that "the use atomic energy will make it possible to obtain practically unlimited ranges and drastically reduce the flight weight of missiles ”(quote from the publication“ Nuclear Rocket Engines ”, edited by A.S. Koroteev, M, 2001). At that time, nuclear-powered propulsion systems were intended, first of all, to equip ballistic missiles, so the government's interest in developments was great. US President John F. Kennedy in 1961 called the national program to create a rocket with a nuclear rocket engine (Project Rover) one of the four priorities in the conquest of space.
KIWI reactor, 1959 Photo: NASA.
In the late 1950s, American scientists created the KIWI reactors. They have been tested many times, the developers have made a large number of modifications. Often there were failures during the tests, for example, once the core of the engine was destroyed and a large hydrogen leak was discovered.
In the early 1960s, both the United States and the USSR created the prerequisites for implementing plans to create nuclear rocket engines, but each country went its own way. The United States created many designs of solid-phase reactors for such engines and tested them on open benches. The USSR was testing the fuel assembly and other engine elements, preparing the production, testing, personnel base for a wider "offensive".
Scheme YARD NERVA. Illustration: NASA.
In the United States, already in 1962, President Kennedy said that "a nuclear rocket will not be used in the first flights to the moon," so it is worth directing funds allocated for space exploration to other developments. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, two more reactors were tested (PEWEE in 1968 and NF-1 in 1972) as part of the NERVA program. But funding was focused on the lunar program, so the U.S. nuclear propulsion program dwindled and ended in 1972.
NASA film about NERVA nuclear jet engine.
In the Soviet Union, the development of nuclear rocket engines continued until the 1970s, and they were led by the now famous triad of domestic academic scientists: Mstislav Keldysh, Igor Kurchatov and. They assessed the possibilities of creating and using missiles with nuclear engines rather optimistically. It seemed that the USSR was about to launch such a rocket. Fire tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site - in 1978, the first reactor of the 11B91 (or RD-0410) nuclear rocket engine was launched, then two more series of tests - the second and third 11B91-IR-100 devices. These were the first and last Soviet nuclear rocket engines.
M.V. Keldysh and S.P. Korolev visiting I.V. Kurchatov, 1959
The first stage is denial
Robert Schmucker, a German expert in the field of rocket technology, considered V. Putin's statements to be completely implausible. “I can't imagine that the Russians can create a small flying reactor,” the expert said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
They can, Herr Schmucker. Just imagine.
The first domestic satellite with a nuclear power plant (Kosmos-367) was launched from Baikonur back in 1970. 37 fuel assemblies of the BES-5 Buk small-sized reactor, containing 30 kg of uranium, at a temperature in the primary circuit of 700°C and a heat release of 100 kW provided the electric power of the installation of 3 kW. The mass of the reactor is less than one ton, estimated time work 120-130 days.
Experts will express doubts: this nuclear “battery” has too little power ... But! You look at the date: it was half a century ago.
Low efficiency - a consequence of thermionic conversion. With other forms of energy transfer, the indicators are much higher, for example, for nuclear power plants, the efficiency value is in the range of 32-38%. In this sense, the thermal power of the "space" reactor is of particular interest. 100 kW is a serious bid for victory.
It should be noted that the BES-5 Buk does not belong to the RTG family. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators convert the energy of the natural decay of atoms of radioactive elements and have negligible power. At the same time, the Buk is a real reactor with a controlled chain reaction.
The next generation of Soviet small-sized reactors, which appeared in the late 1980s, was distinguished by even smaller dimensions and greater energy release. This was the unique Topaz: compared to the Buk, the amount of uranium in the reactor was reduced by a factor of three (to 11.5 kg). Thermal power increased by 50% and amounted to 150 kW, the time of continuous operation reached 11 months (a reactor of this type was installed on board the Cosmos-1867 reconnaissance satellite).
Nuclear space reactors are an extraterrestrial form of death. In case of loss of control, the “shooting star” did not fulfill desires, but could release their sins to the “lucky ones”.
In 1992, the two remaining copies of the small Topaz series reactors were sold in the United States for $13 million.
The main question is: is there enough power for such installations to be used as rocket engines? By passing the working fluid (air) through the hot reactor core and obtaining thrust at the output according to the law of conservation of momentum.
Answer: no. Buk and Topaz are compact nuclear power plants. Other means are needed to create a YRD. But the general trend is visible to the naked eye. Compact nuclear power plants have long been created and exist in practice.
What power should a nuclear power plant have to be used as a main engine for a cruise missile similar in size to the Kh-101?
Can't find a job? Multiply time by power!
(Collection of universal tips.)
Finding power is also not difficult. N=F×V.
According to official data, the Xa-101 cruise missiles, as well as the KR of the Caliber family, are equipped with a short-life turbofan engine-50, which develops a thrust of 450 kgf (≈ 4400 N). Cruise missile cruising speed - 0.8 M, or 270 m / s. The ideal design efficiency of a turbojet bypass engine is 30%.
In this case, the required power of the cruise missile engine is only 25 times higher than the thermal power of the Topaz series reactor.
Despite the doubts of the German expert, the creation of a nuclear turbojet (or ramjet) rocket engine is a realistic task that meets the requirements of our time.
Rocket from Hell
"It's all a surprise - a nuclear-powered cruise missile," said Douglas Barry, senior scientist International Institute strategic studies in London. “This idea is not new, it was talked about in the 60s, but it faced a lot of obstacles.”
It was not only talked about. During tests in 1964, the Tori-IIC nuclear ramjet engine developed a thrust of 16 tons at a thermal power of the reactor of 513 MW. Simulating supersonic flight, the installation used up 450 tons of compressed air in five minutes. The reactor was designed very "hot" - working temperature in the core reached 1600°C. The design had very narrow tolerances: in a number of areas, the permissible temperature was only 150-200 ° C below the temperature at which the rocket elements melted and collapsed.
Were these indicators sufficient for the use of the YaPVRD as an engine in practice? The answer is obvious.
The nuclear ramjet engine developed more (!) thrust than the turbo-ramjet engine of the “three-wing” reconnaissance aircraft SR-71 “Black Bird”.
"Polygon-401", tests of a nuclear ramjet
The experimental facilities "Tori-IIA" and "-IIC" are prototypes of the nuclear engine of the SLAM cruise missile.
A diabolical invention, capable, according to calculations, of piercing 160,000 km of space at a minimum altitude at a speed of 3M. Literally “mowing down” everyone who met on her mournful path with a shock wave and a thunderous peal of 162 dB (deadly for a person).
The combat aircraft reactor did not have any biological protection. The ruptured eardrums after the SLAM flyby would seem like an insignificant circumstance against the background of radioactive emissions from the rocket nozzle. The flying monster left behind a plume more than a kilometer wide with a radiation dose of 200-300 rad. According to calculations, in one hour of flight, SLAM infected 1,800 square miles with deadly radiation.
According to calculations, the length aircraft could reach 26 meters. Starting weight - 27 tons. Combat load - thermonuclear charges that needed to be successively dropped on several Soviet cities along the missile's flight path. After completing the main task, SLAM was supposed to circle over the territory of the USSR for several more days, infecting everything around with radioactive emissions.
Perhaps the most deadly of all that man tried to create. Fortunately, it did not come to real launches.
The project, codenamed Pluto, was canceled on July 1, 1964. At the same time, according to one of the developers of SLAM, J. Craven, none of the military and political leadership of the United States regretted the decision.
The reason for abandoning the "low-flying nuclear missile" was the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Able to cause the necessary damage in less time with incomparable risks for the military themselves. As the authors of the publication in Air & Space magazine rightly noted: ICBMs, at least, did not kill everyone who was near the launcher.
It is still unknown who, where and how planned to test the fiend. And who would be responsible if SLAM strayed off course and flew over Los Angeles. One of the crazy proposals suggested tying the rocket to a cable and driving in circles over deserted areas of the piece. Nevada. However, another question immediately arose: what to do with the rocket when the last remnants of fuel burned out in the reactor? The place where the SLAM will “land” will not be approached for centuries.
Life or death. Final Choice
Unlike the mystical “Pluto” from the 1950s, the project of a modern nuclear missile, voiced by V. Putin, offers the creation of an effective means for breaking through the American missile defense system. Mutual Assured Destruction Means - the most important criterion nuclear deterrence.
The transformation of the classic “nuclear triad” into a diabolical “pentagram” - with the inclusion of a new generation of delivery vehicles (unlimited-range nuclear cruise missiles and status-6 strategic nuclear torpedoes), coupled with the modernization of ICBM warheads (maneuvering Avangard) is reasonable response to new threats. Washington's missile defense policy leaves Moscow no other choice.
“You are developing your anti-missile systems. The range of anti-missiles is increasing, the accuracy is increasing, these weapons are being improved. Therefore, we need to adequately respond to this so that we can overcome the system not only today, but also tomorrow, when you have new weapons.”
V. Putin in an interview with NBC.
The declassified details of the SLAM/Pluto experiments convincingly prove that the creation of a nuclear cruise missile was possible (technically feasible) six decades ago. Modern technologies allows you to take the idea to a new technical level.
The sword rusts with promises
Despite the mass of obvious facts explaining the reasons for the appearance of the “superweapon of the president” and dispelling any doubts about the “impossibility” of creating such systems, in Russia, as well as abroad, there are many skeptics. "All of the listed weapons are just a means of information warfare." And then - a variety of proposals.
Probably, caricature "experts" such as I. Moiseev should not be taken seriously. The head of the Space Policy Institute (?), who told The Insider online edition: “You can’t put a nuclear engine on a cruise missile. Yes, and there are no such engines.
Attempts to "expose" the president's statements are also being made at a more serious analytical level. Such "investigations" immediately gain popularity among the liberal-minded public. Skeptics make the following arguments.
All the systems mentioned above are classified as strategic top-secret weapons, the existence of which cannot be verified or denied. (In the message to the Federal Assembly it was demonstrated computer graphics and launch footage indistinguishable from tests of other types of cruise missiles.) At the same time, no one talks, for example, about creating a heavy strike drone or warship destroyer class. A weapon that would soon have to be demonstrated to the whole world.
According to some "whistleblowers", the purely strategic, "secret" context of the messages may indicate their implausible nature. Well, if this is the main argument, then what is the argument with these people about?
There is also another point of view. Shocking about nuclear missiles and unmanned 100-knot submarines are made against the backdrop of obvious problems of the military-industrial complex encountered in the implementation of more simple projects"traditional" weapons. Claims of missiles that at once surpassed all existing types of weapons stand in sharp contrast against the background of the well-known situation with rocket science. Skeptics cite mass failures during Bulava launches or the creation of the Angara launch vehicle, which has dragged on for two decades, as an example. Itself began in 1995; Speaking in November 2017, Deputy Prime Minister D. Rogozin promised to resume launches of the Angara from the Vostochny Cosmodrome only in ... 2021.
And, by the way, why was Zircon, the main naval sensation of the previous year, left without attention? A hypersonic missile that can cross out all existing concepts of naval combat.
The news about the arrival of laser systems in the troops attracted the attention of manufacturers of laser systems. Existing examples of directed energy weapons were created on an extensive basis of research and development of high-tech equipment for civil market. For example, the American AN/SEQ-3 LaWS shipborne installation represents a “package” of six welding lasers with a total power of 33 kW.
The announcement of the creation of a super-powerful combat laser contrasts against the backdrop of a very weak laser industry: Russia is not one of the world's largest manufacturers of laser equipment (Coherent, IPG Photonics or the Chinese Han "Laser Technology). Therefore, the sudden appearance of high-power laser weapons causes genuine interest among specialists .
There are always more questions than answers. The devil is in the details, but official sources give an extremely poor idea of the latest weapons. Often it is not even clear whether the system is already ready for adoption, or its development is at a certain stage. The well-known precedents associated with the creation of such weapons in the past indicate that the problems arising from this are not solved at the snap of a finger. Fans of technical innovations are concerned about the choice of a place for testing a spacecraft with a nuclear engine. Or ways to communicate with the Status-6 underwater drone (a fundamental problem: radio communication does not work underwater, submarines are forced to rise to the surface during communication sessions). It would be interesting to hear an explanation about how to use it: compared to traditional ICBMs and SLBMs that can start and end a war within an hour, Status-6 will take several days to reach the US coast. When no one else is there!
The last fight is over.
Is anyone left alive?
In response - only the wind howl ...
Using materials:
Air&Space Magazine (April-May 1990)
The Silent War by John Craven
The statement made by Vladimir Putin during his address to the Federal Assembly about the presence in Russia of a nuclear-powered cruise missile caused a great stir in society and the media. At the same time, little was known about what such an engine is and about the possibilities of its use, both for the general public and for specialists.
"Reedus" tried to figure out what technical device could the President speak and what is his uniqueness.
Considering that the presentation at the Manege was made not for an audience of technical specialists, but for the “general” public, its authors could allow a certain substitution of concepts, the Deputy Director of the Institute does not exclude nuclear physics and Technology National Research Nuclear University MEPhI Georgy Tikhomirov.
“What the president said and showed, experts call compact power plants, experiments with which were initially carried out in aviation, and then during the exploration of deep space. These were attempts to solve the insoluble problem of sufficient fuel for flights over unlimited distances. In this sense, the presentation is absolutely correct: the presence of such an engine provides energy to the systems of a rocket or any other apparatus for an arbitrarily long time,” he told Reedus.
Work with such an engine in the USSR began exactly 60 years ago under the guidance of academicians M. Keldysh, I. Kurchatov and S. Korolev. In the same years, similar work was carried out in the United States, but was curtailed in 1965. In the USSR, work continued for about a decade before they were also recognized as irrelevant. Perhaps that is why Washington did not wince much, saying that they were not surprised by the presentation of the Russian missile.
In Russia, the idea of a nuclear engine has never died - in particular, since 2009, it has been practical development such an installation. Judging by the timing, the tests announced by the president fit exactly into this joint project of Roscosmos and Rosatom, since the developers planned to conduct field tests of the engine in 2018. Perhaps, due to political reasons, they pulled themselves up a little and shifted the deadlines “to the left”.
“Technologically, it is arranged in such a way that the nuclear power unit heats the gas coolant. And this heated gas either rotates the turbine or creates jet thrust directly. A certain cunning in the presentation of the rocket, which we heard, is that the range of its flight is still not infinite: it is limited by the volume of the working fluid - liquid gas, which can physically be pumped into the rocket tanks, ”says the specialist.
At the same time, space rocket and a cruise missile are fundamentally different flight control schemes, since they have different tasks. The first one flies in airless space, it does not need to maneuver - it is enough to give it an initial impulse, and then it moves along the calculated ballistic trajectory.
A cruise missile, on the contrary, must continuously change its trajectory, for which it must have enough fuel to create impulses. Whether this fuel will be ignited by a nuclear power plant or a traditional one is not important in this case. Only the supply of this fuel is important, Tikhomirov emphasizes.
“The meaning of a nuclear installation during flights into deep space is the presence of an energy source on board to power the systems of the apparatus for an unlimited time. In this case, there can be not only a nuclear reactor, but also radioisotope thermoelectric generators. And the meaning of such an installation on a rocket, the flight of which will not last longer than a few tens of minutes, is not yet completely clear to me, ”the physicist admits.
The report at the Manege was only a couple of weeks late compared to NASA's February 15 announcement that the Americans were resuming nuclear rocket propulsion research that they abandoned half a century ago.
By the way, in November 2017, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) already announced that before 2045, a nuclear-powered spacecraft would be created in China. Therefore, today we can safely say that the world nuclear propulsion race has begun.
Addressed with a message to the Federal Assembly. That part of his speech, which touched upon questions of defense, became the subject of a lively discussion. The head of state presented new weapons.
We are talking about placing a small-sized heavy-duty nuclear power plant in the body of the Kh-101 air-to-ground cruise missile.
militaryrussia.ru The X-101 cruise missile Since such a missile, carrying a nuclear warhead, has no flight range limitation, and its trajectory cannot be predicted, it negates the effectiveness of any missile defense and air defense, and therefore has the potential to cause irreparable damage any country in the world. According to the president, at the end of 2017, this weapon was successfully tested. And there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
Some Western media were skeptical about the information that Putin voiced. So a certain American official who knows the state of the Russian military-industrial complex, in a conversation with CNN, doubted that the described weapon exists. The interlocutor of the agency said that the United States observed a small number of Russian tests of a nuclear cruise missile and saw all the accidents that accompanied them. "In any case, if Russia ever attacks the US, it will be met with overwhelming force," the official concluded.
Experts in Russia did not stand aside either. So, The Insider took a comment from the head of the Institute of Space Problems Ivan Moiseev, who considered that a cruise missile could not have a nuclear engine.
“Such things are impossible, and not needed, in general. It is impossible to put a nuclear engine on a cruise missile. Yes, and there are no such engines. There is one such megawatt-class engine in development, but it is space and, of course, no tests could be carried out in 2017, ”Moiseev told the publication.
"There were some similar developments in the Soviet Union, but all ideas to put nuclear engines on air rather than space vehicles - airplanes, cruise missiles - were discarded in the 50s of the last century," he added.
The USSR did have nuclear power plants for missiles. Work on their creation started in 1947. America did not lag behind the USSR. In 1961, John F. Kennedy named the nuclear rocket program one of the four priorities in space exploration. But since funding was focused on the Lunar program, there was not enough money to develop a nuclear engine, and the program was closed.
Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union continued to work on nuclear engines. They were developed by scientists such as Mstislav Keldysh, Igor Kurchatov and Sergei Korolev, who, unlike an expert from the Institute of Space Problems, estimated the possibilities of creating rockets with nuclear energy sources quite highly.
In 1978, the first 11B91 nuclear rocket engine was launched, followed by two more series of tests - the second and third 11B91-IR-100 vehicles.
In a word, the USSR had satellites with nuclear power sources. On January 24, 1978, a huge international scandal erupted. Kosmos-954, a Soviet space reconnaissance satellite with a nuclear power plant on board, crashed into Canada. Part of the territories was recognized as radioactively contaminated. There were no casualties among the population. It turned out that the satellite was closely monitored by American intelligence, which knew that the device had a nuclear power source.
Because of the scandal, the USSR had to abandon the launch of such satellites for almost three years and seriously improve the radiation safety system.
On August 30, 1982, another spy satellite with a nuclear engine, Kosmos-1402, was launched from Baikonur. After completing the task, the device was destroyed by the reactor's radiation safety system, which was previously absent.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all developments were abandoned. But, obviously, some time ago they were resumed.
Nuclear rocket engine - a rocket engine, the principle of which is based on a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay, while energy is released that heats the working fluid, which can be reaction products or some other substance, such as hydrogen.
Let's take a look at the options and principles from action ...
There are several types of rocket engines that use the above principle of operation: nuclear, radioisotope, thermonuclear. Using nuclear rocket engines, it is possible to obtain specific impulse values much higher than those that chemical rocket engines can give. The high value of the specific impulse is explained by the high speed of the expiration of the working fluid - about 8-50 km/s. The thrust force of a nuclear engine is comparable to that of chemical engines, which will allow replacing all chemical engines with nuclear ones in the future.
The main obstacle to complete replacement is radioactive contamination. environment caused by nuclear rocket engines.
They are divided into two types - solid-phase and gas-phase. In the first type of engines, fissile material is placed in rod assemblies with a developed surface. This makes it possible to effectively heat the gaseous working fluid, usually hydrogen acts as the working fluid. The exhaust velocity is limited by the maximum temperature of the working fluid, which, in turn, directly depends on the maximum allowable temperature of the structural elements, and it does not exceed 3000 K. In gas-phase nuclear rocket engines, the fissile substance is in a gaseous state. Its retention in the working area is carried out by exposure to an electromagnetic field. For this type of nuclear rocket engines, structural elements are not a deterrent, so the speed of the expiration of the working fluid can exceed 30 km/s. They can be used as first stage engines, despite the leakage of fissile material.
In the 70s. 20th century in the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear rocket engines with fissile material in the solid phase were actively tested. In the United States, a program was being developed to create an experimental nuclear rocket engine as part of the NERVA program.
The Americans developed a graphite reactor cooled by liquid hydrogen, which was heated, evaporated and ejected through a rocket nozzle. The choice of graphite was due to its temperature resistance. According to this project, the specific impulse of the resulting engine was to be twice the corresponding indicator characteristic of chemical engines, with a thrust of 1100 kN. The Nerva reactor was supposed to work as part of the third stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle, but due to the closure of the lunar program and the absence of other tasks for rocket engines of this class, the reactor was never tested in practice.
At present, a gas-phase nuclear rocket engine is in the stage of theoretical development. In a gas-phase nuclear engine, it is intended to use plutonium, the slow moving gas jet of which is surrounded by a faster flow of cooling hydrogen. On the orbital space stations MIR and ISS, experiments were carried out that can give impetus to further development gas phase engines.
Today, we can say that Russia has "frozen" its research in the field of nuclear propulsion systems a little. The work of Russian scientists is more focused on the development and improvement of the basic components and assemblies of nuclear power propulsion systems, as well as their unification. A priority direction for further research in this area is the creation of nuclear power plants capable of operating in two modes. The first is the mode of a nuclear rocket engine, and the second is the mode of installing generating electricity to power the equipment installed on board the spacecraft.
