© Oksana Viktorova/Collage/Ridus
The statement made by Vladimir Putin during his address to the Federal Assembly about the presence in Russia of a cruise missile driven by a nuclear engine caused a storm of excitement in society and the media. At the same time, until recently, quite little was known to both the general public and specialists about what such an engine is and the possibilities of its use.
"Reedus" tried to figure out what technical device the president could speak and what made him unique.
Considering that the presentation in the Manege was not made for an audience of technical specialists, but for the “general” public, its authors could have allowed a certain substitution of concepts, Georgiy Tikhomirov, deputy director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Technology of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, does not rule out.
“What the president said and showed, experts call compact power plants, experiments with which were carried out initially in aviation, and then in deep space exploration. These were attempts to solve the insoluble problem of a sufficient supply of fuel when flying over unlimited distances. In this sense, the presentation is completely correct: the presence of such an engine ensures an arbitrary power supply for the systems of a rocket or any other device for a long time" he told Reedus.
Work with such an engine in the USSR began exactly 60 years ago under the leadership of academicians M. Keldysh, I. Kurchatov and S. Korolev. In the same years, similar work was carried out in the USA, but was discontinued in 1965. In the USSR, work continued for about another decade before it was also considered irrelevant. Perhaps that’s why Washington didn’t react too 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, the practical development of such a plant has been underway. Judging by the timing, the tests announced by the president fit perfectly within this a joint project Roscosmos and Rosatom - since the developers planned to carry out field tests engine in 2018. Possibly due to political reasons They pushed themselves a little harder and moved the deadlines “to the left.”
“Technologically, it is designed in such a way that the nuclear power unit heats gas coolant. And this heated gas either rotates the turbine or creates jet thrust directly. A certain cunning in the presentation of the rocket that we heard is that its flight range is 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, a space rocket and a cruise missile have fundamentally different schemes flight control, since they have different tasks. The first 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 other hand, must continuously change its trajectory, for which it must have a sufficient supply of fuel to create impulses. Will this fuel be ignited by a nuclear power plant or a traditional one? in this case not important. The only thing that matters is the supply of this fuel, Tikhomirov emphasizes.
“The meaning of a nuclear installation when flying into deep space is the presence on board of an energy source to power the systems of the device for an unlimited time. In this case, there may be not only a nuclear reactor, but also radioisotope thermoelectric generators. But the meaning of such an installation on a rocket, the flight of which will not last more than a few tens of minutes, is not yet entirely clear to me,” the physicist admits.
The Manege report was only a couple of weeks late compared to NASA's February 15 announcement that the Americans were resuming research work on a nuclear rocket engine that they abandoned half a century ago.
By the way, in November 2017, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced that a nuclear-powered spacecraft would be created in China by 2045. Therefore, today we can safely say that the global nuclear propulsion race has begun.
Often in general educational publications about astronautics, they do not distinguish the difference between a nuclear rocket engine (NRE) and a nuclear electric propulsion system (NURE). However, these abbreviations hide not only the difference in the principles of transformation nuclear energy due to the thrust of the rocket, but also a very dramatic history of the development of astronautics.
The drama of the story lies in the fact that if those stopped mainly by economic reasons Since research into nuclear propulsion and nuclear propulsion in both the USSR and the USA continued, human flights to Mars would have long ago become commonplace.
It all started with atmospheric aircraft with a ramjet nuclear engine
Designers in the USA and USSR considered “breathing” nuclear installations capable of drawing in outside air and heating it to colossal temperatures. Probably, this principle of thrust generation was borrowed from ramjet engines, only instead of rocket fuel, the fission energy of atomic nuclei of uranium dioxide 235 was used.In the USA, such an engine was developed as part of the Pluto project. The Americans managed to create two prototypes of the new engine - Tory-IIA and Tory-IIC, which even powered the reactors. The installation capacity was supposed to be 600 megawatts.
The engines developed as part of the Pluto project were planned to be installed on cruise missiles, which in the 1950s were created under the designation SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, supersonic low-altitude missile).
The United States planned to build a rocket 26.8 meters long, three meters in diameter, and weighing 28 tons. The rocket body was supposed to contain a nuclear warhead, as well as a nuclear propulsion system having a length of 1.6 meters and a diameter of 1.5 meters. Compared to other sizes, the installation looked very compact, which explains its direct-flow principle of operation.
The developers believed that, thanks to the nuclear engine, the SLAM missile's flight range would be at least 182 thousand kilometers.
In 1964, the US Department of Defense closed the project. The official reason was that in flight, a nuclear-powered cruise missile pollutes everything around too much. But in fact, the reason was the significant costs of maintaining such rockets, especially since by that time rocketry was rapidly developing based on liquid-propellant rocket engines, the maintenance of which was much cheaper.
The USSR remained faithful to the idea of creating a ramjet design for a nuclear powered engine much longer than the United States, closing the project only in 1985. But the results turned out to be much more significant. Thus, the first and only Soviet nuclear rocket engine was developed at the Khimavtomatika design bureau, Voronezh. This is RD-0410 (GRAU Index - 11B91, also known as “Irbit” and “IR-100”).
The RD-0410 used a heterogeneous thermal neutron reactor, the moderator was zirconium hydride, the neutron reflectors were made of beryllium, the nuclear fuel was a material based on uranium and tungsten carbides, with about 80% enrichment in the 235 isotope.
The design included 37 fuel assemblies, covered with thermal insulation that separated them from the moderator. The design provided that the hydrogen flow first passed through the reflector and moderator, maintaining their temperature at room temperature, and then entered the core, where it cooled the fuel assemblies, heating up to 3100 K. At the stand, the reflector and moderator were cooled by a separate hydrogen flow.
The reactor went through a significant series of tests, but was never tested for its full operating duration. However, the outside reactor components were completely exhausted.
Technical characteristics of RD 0410
Thrust in void: 3.59 tf (35.2 kN)
Reactor thermal power: 196 MW
Specific thrust impulse in vacuum: 910 kgf s/kg (8927 m/s)
Number of starts: 10
Working resource: 1 hour
Fuel components: working fluid - liquid hydrogen, auxiliary substance - heptane
Weight with radiation protection: 2 tons
Engine dimensions: height 3.5 m, diameter 1.6 m.
Relatively small dimensions and weight, high temperature of nuclear fuel (3100 K) at effective system cooling by a hydrogen flow indicates that the RD0410 is an almost ideal prototype of a nuclear propulsion engine for modern cruise missiles. And, taking into account modern technologies for producing self-stopping nuclear fuel, increasing the resource from an hour to several hours is a very real task.
Nuclear rocket engine designs
Nuclear rocket engine (NRE) is a jet engine in which the energy generated when nuclear reaction decay or synthesis, heats the working fluid (most often hydrogen or ammonia).There are three types of nuclear propulsion engines depending on the type of fuel for the reactor:
- solid phase;
- liquid phase;
- gas phase.
In gas-phase nuclear propellant engines, the fuel (for example, uranium) and the working fluid are in a gaseous state (in the form of plasma) and are held in work area electromagnetic field. Uranium plasma heated to tens of thousands of degrees transfers heat to the working fluid (for example, hydrogen), which, in turn, being heated to high temperatures and forms a jet stream.
Based on the type of nuclear reaction, a distinction is made between a radioisotope rocket engine, a thermonuclear rocket engine and a nuclear engine itself (the energy of nuclear fission is used).
An interesting option is also a pulsed nuclear rocket engine - it is proposed to use a nuclear charge as a source of energy (fuel). Such installations can be of internal and external types.
The main advantages of nuclear powered engines are:
- high specific impulse;
- significant energy reserves;
- compactness of the propulsion system;
- the possibility of obtaining very high thrust - tens, hundreds and thousands of tons in a vacuum.
- fluxes of penetrating radiation (gamma radiation, neutrons) during nuclear reactions;
- removal of highly radioactive compounds of uranium and its alloys;
- outflow of radioactive gases with the working fluid.
Nuclear propulsion system
Considering that any reliable information about nuclear power plants from publications, including from scientific articles, it is impossible to obtain, the operating principle of such installations is best considered using examples of open patent materials, although they contain know-how.For example, the outstanding Russian scientist Anatoly Sazonovich Koroteev, the author of the invention under the patent, provided a technical solution for the composition of equipment for a modern YARDU. Below I present part of the said patent document verbatim and without comment.
The essence of the proposed technical solution is illustrated by the diagram presented in the drawing. A nuclear propulsion system operating in propulsion-energy mode contains an electric propulsion system (EPS) (the example diagram shows two electric rocket engines 1 and 2 with corresponding feed systems 3 and 4), a reactor installation 5, a turbine 6, a compressor 7, a generator 8, heat exchanger-recuperator 9, Ranck-Hilsch vortex tube 10, refrigerator-radiator 11. In this case, turbine 6, compressor 7 and generator 8 are combined into a single unit - a turbogenerator-compressor. The nuclear propulsion unit is equipped with pipelines 12 of the working fluid and electrical lines 13 connecting the generator 8 and the electric propulsion unit. The heat exchanger-recuperator 9 has the so-called high-temperature 14 and low-temperature 15 working fluid inputs, as well as high-temperature 16 and low-temperature 17 working fluid outputs.Links:The output of the reactor unit 5 is connected to the input of turbine 6, the output of turbine 6 is connected to the high-temperature input 14 of the heat exchanger-recuperator 9. The low-temperature output 15 of the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 is connected to the entrance to the Ranck-Hilsch vortex tube 10. The Ranck-Hilsch vortex tube 10 has two outputs , one of which (via the “hot” working fluid) is connected to the radiator refrigerator 11, and the other (via the “cold” working fluid) is connected to the input of the compressor 7. The output of the radiator refrigerator 11 is also connected to the input to the compressor 7. Compressor output 7 is connected to the low-temperature 15 input to the heat exchanger-recuperator 9. The high-temperature output 16 of the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 is connected to the input to the reactor installation 5. Thus, the main elements of the nuclear power plant are interconnected by a single circuit of the working fluid.
The nuclear power plant works as follows. The working fluid heated in the reactor installation 5 is sent to the turbine 6, which ensures the operation of the compressor 7 and the generator 8 of the turbogenerator-compressor. Generator 8 generates electrical energy, which electrical lines 13 is directed to electric rocket engines 1 and 2 and their feed systems 3 and 4, ensuring their operation. After leaving the turbine 6, the working fluid is sent through the high-temperature inlet 14 to the heat exchanger-recuperator 9, where the working fluid is partially cooled.
Then, from the low-temperature outlet 17 of the heat exchanger-recuperator 9, the working fluid is directed into the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube 10, inside which the working fluid flow is divided into “hot” and “cold” components. The “hot” part of the working fluid then goes to the refrigerator-emitter 11, where this part of the working fluid is effectively cooled. The “cold” part of the working fluid goes to the inlet of the compressor 7, and after cooling, the part of the working fluid leaving the radiating refrigerator 11 also follows there.
Compressor 7 supplies the cooled working fluid to the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 through the low-temperature inlet 15. This cooled working fluid in the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 provides partial cooling of the counter flow of the working fluid entering the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 from the turbine 6 through the high-temperature inlet 14. Next, the partially heated working fluid (due to heat exchange with the counter flow of the working fluid from the turbine 6) from the heat exchanger-recuperator 9 through the high-temperature outlet 16 again enters the reactor installation 5, the cycle is repeated again.
Thus, located in closed loop a single working fluid ensures continuous operation of the nuclear power plant, and the use of a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube as part of the nuclear power plant in accordance with the claimed technical solution improves the weight and size characteristics of the nuclear power plant, increases the reliability of its operation, and simplifies it design diagram and makes it possible to increase the efficiency of nuclear power plants as a whole.
Russian military space drive
A lot of noise in the media and social networks was caused by Vladimir Putin’s statements that Russia was testing a new generation cruise missile with almost unlimited range and is therefore practically invulnerable to all existing and planned missile defense systems.
“At the end of 2017 at the central training ground Russian Federation The latest Russian cruise missile was successfully launched from nuclear energy installation. During the flight, the power plant reached the specified power and provided the required level of thrust,” Putin said during his traditional address to the Federal Assembly.
The missile was discussed in the context of other advanced Russian developments in the field of weapons, along with the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, etc. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that Putin’s statements are analyzed primarily in a military-political vein. However, in fact, the question is much broader: it seems that Russia is on the verge of developing real technology future, capable of bringing revolutionary changes to rocket and space technology and beyond. But first things first…
Jet technologies: a “chemical” dead end
Almost now a hundred years When we talk about a jet engine, we most often mean a chemical jet engine. And jet planes and space rockets are driven by the energy obtained from the combustion of the fuel on board.
IN general outline it works like this: fuel enters the combustion chamber, where it is mixed with an oxidizer ( atmospheric air in an air-breathing engine or oxygen from on-board reserves in a rocket engine). The mixture then ignites, resulting in the rapid release of significant amount energy in the form of heat, which is transferred to gaseous combustion products. When heated, the gas rapidly expands and, as it were, squeezes itself out through the engine nozzle at considerable speed. A jet stream appears and a jet thrust is created, pushing aircraft in the direction opposite to the direction of the jet flow.
He 178 and Falcon Heavy are different products and engines, but this does not change the essence.
Jet and rocket engines in all their diversity (from the first Heinkel 178 jet to Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy) use precisely this principle - only the approaches to its application change. And all rocketry designers are forced, in one way or another, to come to terms with the fundamental drawback of this principle: the need to carry a significant amount of quickly consumed fuel on board the aircraft. How great job the engine has to perform, the more fuel must be on board and the less payload the aircraft can take with it on flight.
For example, the maximum take-off weight of a Boeing 747-200 airliner is about 380 tons. Of these, 170 tons are for the aircraft itself, about 70 tons are for the payload (weight of cargo and passengers), and 140 tons, or approximately 35%, fuel weighs, which burns in flight at a rate of about 15 tons per hour. That is, for every ton of cargo there are 2.5 tons of fuel. And the Proton-M rocket, for launching 22 tons of cargo into a low reference orbit, consumes about 630 tons of fuel, i.e. almost 30 tons of fuel per ton of payload. As you can see, the “coefficient useful action"More than modest.
If we talk about really long flights, for example, to other planets solar system, then the fuel-load ratio becomes simply murderous. For example, the American Saturn 5 rocket could deliver 45 tons of cargo to the Moon, while burning over 2000 tons of fuel. And Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy, with a launch mass of one and a half thousand tons, is capable of delivering only 15 tons of cargo into Mars orbit, that is, 0.1% of its initial mass.
That's why manned flight to the moon still remains a task at the limit of humanity's technological capabilities, and the flight to Mars goes beyond these limits. Worse yet: It is no longer possible to significantly expand these capabilities while continuing to further improve chemical rockets. In their development, humanity has “hit” a ceiling determined by the laws of nature. In order to go further, a fundamentally different approach is needed.
"Atomic" thrust
The combustion of chemical fuels has long ceased to be the most efficient known method of producing energy.
From 1 kilogram coal you can get about 7 kilowatt-hours of energy, while 1 kilogram of uranium contains about 620 thousand kilowatt-hours.
And if you create an engine that will receive energy from nuclear, and not from chemical processes, then such an engine will require tens of thousands(!) times less fuel to do the same work. The key drawback of jet engines can be eliminated in this way. However, from idea to implementation there is a long path along which a lot of complex problems have to be solved. Firstly, it was necessary to create a nuclear reactor that was light and compact enough so that it could be installed on an aircraft. Secondly, it was necessary to figure out exactly how to use the energy of the decay of an atomic nucleus to heat the gas in the engine and create a jet stream.
The most obvious option was to simply pass gas through the hot reactor core. However, interacting directly with fuel assemblies, this gas would become very radioactive. Leaving the engine in the form of a jet stream, it would heavily contaminate everything around, so using such an engine in the atmosphere would be unacceptable. This means that heat from the core must be transferred somehow differently, but how exactly? And where can you get materials that can retain their structural properties for many hours at such high temperatures?
It’s even easier to imagine the use of nuclear power in “unmanned deep-sea vehicles,” also mentioned by Putin in the same message. In fact, it will be something like a super torpedo that will suck in sea water, turn it into heated steam, which will form a jet stream. Such a torpedo will be able to travel thousands of kilometers underwater, moving at any depth and being capable of hitting any target at sea or on the coast. At the same time, it will be almost impossible to intercept it on the way to the target.
Samples currently ready for deployment similar devices Russia, it seems, does not have one yet. As for the nuclear-powered cruise missile that Putin spoke about, we are apparently talking about a test launch of a “mass-size model” of such a missile with an electric heater instead of a nuclear one. This is precisely what Putin’s words about “reaching a given power” and “proper thrust level” can mean – checking whether the engine of such a device can operate with such “input parameters.” Of course, unlike a nuclear-powered sample, a “model” product is not capable of flying any significant distance, but this is not required of it. Using such a sample, it is possible to work out technological solutions related to the purely “propulsion” part, while the reactor is being finalized and tested at the stand. Separate this stage from delivery finished product maybe just a little time - a year or two.
Well, if such an engine can be used in cruise missiles, then what will prevent it from being used in aviation? Imagine nuclear powered airliner, capable of traveling tens of thousands of kilometers without landing or refueling, without consuming hundreds of tons of expensive aviation fuel! In general, we are talking about a discovery that could in the future make a real revolution in the transport sector...
Is Mars ahead?
However, the main purpose of the nuclear power plant seems to be much more exciting - to become the nuclear heart of a new generation of spacecraft, which will make possible reliable transport links with other planets of the solar system. Of course, you can't use a turbo in airless space. jet engines using outside air. Whatever one may say, you will have to take the substance with you to create a jet stream here. The task is to use it much more economically during operation, and for this, the rate of flow of the substance from the engine nozzle must be as high as possible. In chemical rocket engines, this speed is up to 5 thousand meters per second (usually 2–3 thousand), and it is not possible to significantly increase it.
Much higher speeds can be achieved using a different principle of creating a jet stream - acceleration of charged particles (ions) electric field. The speed of the jet in an ion engine can reach 70 thousand meters per second, that is, to obtain the same amount of movement it will be necessary to spend 20–30 times less substance. True, such an engine will consume quite a lot of electricity. And to produce this energy you will need a nuclear reactor.
Model of a reactor installation for a megawatt-class nuclear power plant
Electric (ion and plasma) rocket engines already exist, e.g. back in 1971 The USSR launched into orbit the Meteor spacecraft with a stationary plasma engine SPD-60 developed by the Fakel Design Bureau. Today, similar engines are actively used to correct the orbit of artificial Earth satellites, but their power does not exceed 3–4 kilowatts (5 and a half horsepower).
However, in 2015, the Research Center named after. Keldysh announced the creation of a prototype ion engine with a power of the order of 35 kilowatts(48 hp). It doesn't sound very impressive, but several of these engines are quite enough to power a spacecraft moving in the void and away from strong gravitational fields. The acceleration that such engines will impart to the spacecraft will be small, but they will be able to maintain it for a long time (existing ion engines have a continuous operation time up to three years).
In modern spacecraft, rocket engines operate only for a short time, while for the main part of the flight the ship flies by inertia. The ion engine, receiving energy from a nuclear reactor, will operate throughout the flight - in the first half, accelerating the ship, in the second, braking it. Calculations show that such a spacecraft could reach the orbit of Mars in 30–40 days, and not in a year, like a ship with chemical engines, and also carry with it a descent module that could deliver a person to the surface of the Red Planet, and then pick him up from there.
One could begin this article with a traditional passage about how science fiction writers put forward bold ideas, and scientists then bring them to life. You can, but you don’t want to write with stamps. It is better to remember that modern rocket engines, solid fuel and liquid, have more than unsatisfactory characteristics for flights over relatively long distances. They allow you to launch cargo into Earth orbit and deliver something to the Moon, although such a flight is more expensive. But flying to Mars with such engines is no longer easy. Give them fuel and oxidizer in the required quantities. And these volumes are directly proportional to the distance that must be overcome.
An alternative to traditional chemical rocket engines are electric, plasma and nuclear engines. Of all the alternative engines, only one system has reached the stage of engine development - nuclear (Nuclear Reaction Engine). In the Soviet Union and the United States, work began on the creation of nuclear rocket engines back in the 50s of the last century. The Americans were working on both options for such a power plant: reactive and pulsed. The first concept involves heating the working fluid using a nuclear reactor and then releasing it through nozzles. The pulse nuclear propulsion engine, in turn, propels the spacecraft through successive explosions of small amounts of nuclear fuel.
Also in the USA, the Orion project was invented, combining both versions of the nuclear powered engine. This was done in the following way: small nuclear charges with a capacity of about 100 tons of TNT were ejected from the tail of the ship. Metal discs were fired after them. At a distance from the ship, the charge was detonated, the disk evaporated, and the substance scattered in different directions. Part of it fell into the reinforced tail section of the ship and moved it forward. A small increase in thrust should have been provided by the evaporation of the plate taking the blows. The unit cost of such a flight should have been only 150 then dollars per kilogram of payload.
It even got to the point of testing: experience showed that movement with the help of successive impulses is possible, as is the creation of a stern plate of sufficient strength. But the Orion project was closed in 1965 as unpromising. However, this is so far the only existing concept that can allow expeditions at least across the solar system.
It was only possible to reach the construction of a prototype with a nuclear-powered rocket engine. These were the Soviet RD-0410 and the American NERVA. They worked on the same principle: in a “conventional” nuclear reactor, the working fluid is heated, which, when ejected from the nozzles, creates thrust. The working fluid of both engines was liquid hydrogen, but the Soviet one used heptane as an auxiliary substance.
The thrust of the RD-0410 was 3.5 tons, NERVA gave almost 34, but it also had large dimensions: 43.7 meters in length and 10.5 in diameter versus 3.5 and 1.6 meters, respectively, for the Soviet engine. At the same time, the American engine was three times inferior to the Soviet one in terms of resource - the RD-0410 could work for an hour.
However, both engines, despite their promise, also remained on Earth and did not fly anywhere. main reason the closure of both projects (NERVA in the mid-70s, RD-0410 in 1985) - money. The characteristics of chemical engines are worse than those of nuclear engines, but the cost of one launch of a ship with a nuclear propulsion engine with the same payload can be 8-12 times more than the launch of the same Soyuz with a liquid propellant engine. And this is without taking into account all the expenses necessary to bring nuclear engines until suitable for practical use.
Decommissioning of "cheap" Shuttles and absence of Lately Revolutionary breakthroughs in space technology require new solutions. In April of this year, the then head of Roscosmos A. Perminov announced his intention to develop and put into operation a completely new nuclear propulsion system. This is precisely what, in the opinion of Roscosmos, should radically improve the “situation” in the entire world cosmonautics. Now it has become clear who should become the next revolutionaries in astronautics: the development of nuclear propulsion engines will be carried out by the Keldysh Center Federal State Unitary Enterprise. CEO enterprise A. Koroteev has already pleased the public that the preliminary design of the spacecraft for the new nuclear propulsion engine will be ready in next year. The engine design should be ready by 2019, with testing scheduled for 2025.
The complex was called TEM - transport and energy module. It will carry a gas-cooled nuclear reactor. The direct propulsion system has not yet been decided: either it will be a jet engine like the RD-0410, or an electric rocket engine (ERE). However last type So far, it has not been widely used anywhere in the world: only three spacecraft were equipped with them. But the fact that the reactor can power not only the engine, but also many other units, or even use the entire TEM as a space power plant, speaks in favor of the electric propulsion engine.
Already at the end of this decade, a nuclear-powered spacecraft for interplanetary travel may be created in Russia. And this will dramatically change the situation both in near-Earth space and on the Earth itself.
The nuclear power plant (NPP) will be ready for flight in 2018. This was announced by the director of the Keldysh Center, academician Anatoly Koroteev. “We must prepare the first sample (of a megawatt-class nuclear power plant. – Expert Online’s note) for flight tests in 2018. Whether she will fly or not is another matter, there may be a queue, but she must be ready to fly,” RIA Novosti reported his words. The above means that one of the most ambitious Soviet-Russian projects in the field of space exploration is entering the phase of immediate practical implementation.
The essence of this project, the roots of which go back to the middle of the last century, is this. Now flights into near-Earth space are carried out on rockets that move due to the combustion of liquid or liquid in their engines. solid fuel. Essentially, this is the same engine as in a car. Only in a car does gasoline, when burned, push the pistons in the cylinders, transferring its energy through them to the wheels. And in a rocket engine, burning kerosene or heptyl directly pushes the rocket forward.
Over the past half century, this rocket technology has been perfected all over the world to the smallest detail. But the rocket scientists themselves admit that . Improvement - yes, it is necessary. Trying to increase the payload of rockets from the current 23 tons to 100 and even 150 tons based on “improved” combustion engines - yes, you need to try. But this is a dead end from an evolutionary point of view. " No matter how hard rocket engine experts around the world work, maximum effect, which we receive will be calculated in fractions of percent. Roughly speaking, everything has been squeezed out of existing rocket engines, be they liquid or solid fuel, and attempts to increase thrust and specific impulse are simply futile. Nuclear power propulsion systems provide a multifold increase. Using the example of a flight to Mars, now it takes one and a half to two years to fly there and back, but it will be possible to fly in two to four months “- the former head of the Russian Federal Space Agency assessed the situation at one time Anatoly Perminov.
Therefore, back in 2010, the then President of Russia, and now Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev By the end of this decade, an order was given to create in our country a space transport and energy module based on a megawatt-class nuclear power plant. It is planned to allocate 17 billion rubles from the federal budget, Roscosmos and Rosatom for the development of this project until 2018. 7.2 billion of this amount was allocated to the Rosatom state corporation for the creation of a reactor plant (this is being done by the Dollezhal Research and Design Institute of Energy Engineering), 4 billion - to the Keldysh Center for the creation of a nuclear power propulsion plant. 5.8 billion rubles are allocated by RSC Energia to create a transport and energy module, that is, in other words, a rocket ship.
Naturally, all this work is not done in a vacuum. From 1970 to 1988, the USSR alone launched more than three dozen spy satellites into space, equipped with low-power nuclear power plants such as Buk and Topaz. They were used to create an all-weather system for monitoring surface targets throughout the World Ocean and issuing target designation with transmission to weapon carriers or command posts - the Legend naval space reconnaissance and target designation system (1978).
NASA and American companies, which produce spacecraft and their delivery vehicles, have not been able to create a nuclear reactor that would operate stably in space during this time, although they tried three times. Therefore, in 1988, a ban was passed through the UN on the use of spacecraft with nuclear power propulsion systems, and the production of satellites of the US-A type with nuclear propulsion on board in the Soviet Union was discontinued.
In parallel, in the 60-70s of the last century, the Keldysh Center conducted active work to create an ion engine (electroplasma engine), which is most suitable for creating a high-power propulsion system operating on nuclear fuel. The reactor produces heat, which is converted into electricity by a generator. With the help of electricity, the inert gas xenon in such an engine is first ionized, and then positively charged particles (positive xenon ions) are accelerated in an electrostatic field to a given speed and create thrust when leaving the engine. This is the operating principle of the ion engine, a prototype of which has already been created at the Keldysh Center.
« In the 90s of the 20th century, we at the Keldysh Center resumed work on ion engines. Now a new cooperation must be created for such a powerful project. There is already a prototype of an ion engine on which basic technological and Constructive decisions. But standard products still need to be created. We have a set deadline - by 2018 the product should be ready for flight tests, and by 2015 the main engine testing should be completed. Next - life tests and tests of the entire unit as a whole.“, noted last year the head of the electrophysics department of the Research Center named after M.V. Keldysh, Professor, Faculty of Aerophysics and Space Research, MIPT Oleg Gorshkov.
What is the practical benefit for Russia from these developments? This benefit far exceeds the 17 billion rubles that the state intends to spend by 2018 on creating a launch vehicle with a nuclear power plant on board with a capacity of 1 MW. Firstly, this is a dramatic expansion of the capabilities of our country and humanity in general. A nuclear-powered spacecraft provides real opportunities for people to accomplish things on other planets. Now many countries have such ships. They also resumed in the United States in 2003, after the Americans received two samples of Russian satellites with nuclear power plants.
However, despite this, a member of the NASA special commission on manned flights Edward Crowley for example, he believes that a ship for an international flight to Mars should have Russian nuclear engines. " Russian experience in the development of nuclear engines is in demand. I think Russia has a very great experience both in the development of rocket engines and in nuclear technology. She also has extensive experience in human adaptation to space conditions, since Russian cosmonauts made very long flights “,” Crowley told reporters last spring after a lecture at Moscow State University on American plans for manned space exploration.
Secondly, such ships make it possible to sharply intensify activity in near-Earth space and provide a real opportunity to begin the colonization of the Moon (there are already construction projects on the Earth’s satellite nuclear power plants). « The use of nuclear propulsion systems is being considered for large manned systems, rather than for small spacecraft, which can fly on other types of installations using ion engines or solar wind energy. Nuclear propulsion systems with ion engines can be used on an interorbital reusable tug. For example, transport cargo between low and high orbits, and fly to asteroids. You can create a reusable lunar tug or send an expedition to Mars“, says Professor Oleg Gorshkov. Ships like these are dramatically changing the economics of space exploration. According to calculations by RSC Energia specialists, a nuclear-powered launch vehicle reduces the cost of launching a payload into lunar orbit by more than half compared to liquid rocket engines.
Third, these are new materials and technologies that will be created during the implementation of this project and then introduced into other industries - metallurgy, mechanical engineering, etc. That is, this is one of those breakthrough projects that can really push both the Russian and global economies forward.