LMT's DRACO project cut by budget slashes, but its deep NASA ties and NEP work keep its space ambitions alive.

There have been full scale nuclear thermal rocket engines built and tested on the ground since the 1960s. The US had the NERVA project. The attraction is that the ISP would be up to triple the ISP of ...

Angry Astronaut describes a hypothetical nuclear thermal rocket assembled in orbit. He assumes a nuclear thermal rocket will be working by the end of 2030. He says the SpaceX approach to building a ...

NASA's initiatives to pioneer next-generation space technologies are also hit hard in the White House's budget proposal. If the Trump administration gets its way, NASA's Space Technology Mission ...

A nuclear thermal rocket engine in development could one day transport humans to Mars. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the US Department of Defense, and NASA are ...

Engineers say a nuclear thermal rocket could cut astronauts' travel time to Mars from nine months to two. Credit: NASA NASA and the U.S. military plan to test a nuclear-powered rocket engine in ...

As we set our sights on crewed Mars missions, we're going to have to consider some next-level rocket engines. One idea with a lot of potential is nuclear thermal propulsion.

Nuclear thermal propulsion could also one day power maneuverable space platforms that would protect American satellites in and beyond Earth's orbit. But the technology is still in development.

The US Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has cancelled the Demonstration ...

Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and ...

Nuclear thermal propulsion could also one day power maneuverable space platforms that would protect American satellites in and beyond Earth’s orbit. But the technology is still in development.

Nuclear thermal propulsion systems have roughly twice the specific impulse of chemical rockets, which means they could cut the travel time by a factor of 2. Nuclear thermal propulsion history ...