System shock 2 core control code system shock 2 go to the engine core on the engineering deck1/31/2024 This turned out to be an attempt to have your cake and eat it too. Which more or less makes the exhaust plume a weapon of mass destruction, and significatly increases the radiation exposure on the poor ship's crew.Įngineers tried to fix the radiation problem of the open-cycle GCNTR by making it closed-cycle that is, preventing physical contact between the gaseous uranium and the propellant. The major draw-back of open-cycle GCNTR is that there is no feasible to prevent any of the radioactive fission products and unburnt uranium from escaping out the exhaust. This is the open-cycle gas-core NTR, with an exhaust velocity of a whopping 34,000 m/s. Lateral thinking rocket engineers had the brainstorm of "what if the reactor starts out molten in the first place?" This lead to the design of liquid-core NTR, with a temperature of 5,250 K and an exhaust velocity of 16,000 m/s.īecause rocket engineers can't resist turning it up to 11, they figured if liquid is good then gaseous should be even better. Some fancy high temperature designs can push that up to an exhaust velocity of about 11,800 m/s. To avoid this unhappy state of affairs, solid core NTRs are limited to a temperature of about 2,750 K (4,490° F), which translates into an exhaust velocity limit of about 8,093 m/s (with liquid hydrogen, double that if you've manage to figure out how to stablize monoatomic hydrogen). The molten remains of the reactor shoots out the exhaust bell like a radioactive bat from hell, killing anybody nearby and leaving the spacecraft without an engine. This is a bad thing, technical term is Nuclear meltdown, non-technical term is The China Syndrome. Which means the core ain't solid any more. And as with all matter, if you raise the temperature, at some point it will get hot enough so that the reactor melts. Solid core NTRs use a solid-core nuclear reactor. Which brings us to the exhaust velocity limit. Which a fancy way to say "the hotter the reactor, the higher the exhaust velocity." The exhaust velocity and specific impulse of NTR are proportional to the thermal levels inside the reactor. Note neutron isolation shield (10).Įxhaust Velocity Limits on Nuclear Thermal Rockets An interpretation by master artist William Black.
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