DARPA Awards $14M to Develop Nuclear Rocket Engine for US Military

Article by Luke Dormehl                                    October 2, 2020                                (yahoo.com)

• The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Gryphon Technologies $14 million to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for the US military rockets (similar to the one pictured above). The High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system will be used to enable the military to carry out missions in cislunar space, or the area between the Earth and the orbit of the Moon.

• “A successfully demonstrated NTP system will provide a leap ahead in space-propulsion capability, allowing agile and rapid transit over vast distances as compared to present propulsion approaches,” said Tabitha Dodson, Gryphon’s chief engineer. In an NTP system, a nuclear reactor heats a propellant, like hydrogen, to extreme temperatures. It then expels it via a nozzle to create thrust. This method could be significantly more efficient than current chemical rockets, with a ‘thrust-to-weight ratio’ reportedly 10,000 times greater than electric propulsion.

• The CEO of Gryphon, P.J. Braden, said in a statement. “We are proud to support DRACO and the development and demonstration of NTP, a significant technological advancement in efforts to achieve cislunar space awareness.” The NTP system development is part of DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program.

• Between this, the rise of Space Force, NASA commissioning private companies to retrieve space resources, and the continued work of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, space exploration is about as fast-moving and full of promise as it’s been in many years.

• [Editor’s Note]  The Pentagon’s deep state infested Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency named its advanced propulsion development program “DRACO”? That is a bit on the nose, isn’t it?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Gryphon Technologies $14 million to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for the U.S. military. Part of DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, the High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system will be used to enable the military to carry out missions in cislunar space, meaning the area between the Earth and the orbit of the moon.

“A successfully demonstrated NTP system will provide a leap ahead in space-propulsion capability, allowing agile and rapid transit over vast distances as compared to present propulsion approaches,” Tabitha Dodson, Gryphon’s chief engineer on the support team and a national expert in NTP systems, said in a statement.

The militarization of space, this time largely involving the United States and China, has been in the news in recent years in a way that it hasn’t since the decades-old Space Race between the U.S. and the Soviets. The idea of using Nuclear Thermal Propulsion to power spacecraft is that a nuclear reactor utilized to heat a propellant like hydrogen to extreme temperatures, prior to expelling it via a nozzle in order to create thrust, could be significantly more efficient than current chemical rockets. It would also have a thrust-to-weight ratio that is reportedly 10,000 times greater than electric propulsion.

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