Comment by HPsquared
8 hours ago
Fission fragment rocket engines are also (theoretically) extremely efficient.. using the particles that come out of the reaction directly as a high-velocity exhaust stream.
8 hours ago
Fission fragment rocket engines are also (theoretically) extremely efficient.. using the particles that come out of the reaction directly as a high-velocity exhaust stream.
FFR have super high ISP but microscopic thrust. Not exactly practical.
Practical for many missions, just not for sending humans in person to other planets. For example, consider a mission to deliver a telescope out past 550AU so that it can use the whole sun as a gravitational lens. That’s more than 11× further than Pluto, but a fission fragment drive could get the telescope out there in about the amount of time it took New Horizons to fly past Pluto.
For that particular mission I’d be curious to compare to an ion drive architecture.
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