Cryo-Engineering in the Nuclear Rocket Program

Abstract

Among the many remarkable technological achievements which have enriched our lives in the years since World War II, few have been more exciting to the imagination than the recent spectacular developments in the field of rocketry. Rocket systems are now available, as we all know, with sufficient power to permit mankind to take an initial step toward an objective probably as ancient as man himself: the exploration of outer space. In order to accomplish even this much, however, it has been necessary to construct compact, lightweight, and extremely powerful rocket engines, and to develop suitable sources of energy from which these engines can extract the necessary power. To date the requisite energy has been obtained from the carrying out of highly exothermic chemical reactions in the combustion chamber of a rocket engine system, the thermal energy of the reaction products being converted into a directed flux of kinetic energy in the rocket nozzle.

Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.