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Advanced Space Propulsion - DAEDALUS, ORION, and Others
by Louis E. Della Torre, Jr.
ORION was the name given to a
proposal put forward during the 1960s for a very large vehicle
using pulsed nuclear propulsion. In lay person's terms "pulsed
nuclear propulsion" involves exploding nuclear warheads
immediately astern of the vehicle. The force of the blast would
expend itself against a pusher plate, driving the vehicle
forward. At first blush this seems totally impractical.
However, studies conducted at the time indicated that the concept
was, from an engineering standpoint, feasible. (Although some
very big numbers were involved.)
ORION was touted in some quarters as an interstellar
vehicle. The consensus, however, seems to be that it was not
practical for this purpose. On the other hand, what ORION
*could* have done was to move very large payloads around the
solar system relatively quickly.
First, as to the legal aspects: Glenn Reynolds was correct
in stating in message #122072 that the only international legal
obstacle to an is the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Just why that
treaty doesn't exempt peaceful nuclear explosions is beyond me.
It could be due to verification problems, i.e.-it's difficult to
determine the purpose of a nuclear explosion without on-site
inspection, which is not provided for in the Test Ban Treaty.
However, I suspect that the main reason was that at the time the
Treaty was negotiated (1963) no one thought of the possibility of
peaceful nuclear explosions anywhere but underground. Since the
Test Ban Treaty exempts *all* underground explosions, there was
thought to be no need for such an exemption in the treaty. Then
when ORION came along----
By way of a digression, this is not the only or even worst
instance of the U.S. State Department blithely negotiating
treaties which have come back to haunt us in space-related areas.
Indeed, someone once commented that the problem with the State
Department as an institution is that it has a tendency to forget
its job is to represent the interests of the United States in its
dealings with foreign governments rather than the other way
round. To put it another way, the denizens of Foggy Bottom need
to be constantly reminded that in their business enlightened
selfishness rather than disinterested altruism should be the
ruling principle.
The most serious example of this is, of course, the effect of
the ABM Treaty on SDI development. Not to put too fine a point
on it, sooner or later (and probably sooner rather than later)
we're going to have to choose between abandoning SDI and
renouncing the ABM Treaty. Another example is the Moon Treaty,
with its potential for a Third World veto/ripoff of commercial
exploitation of extraterrestrial materials.
Yet another example which might be cited is in the rather
arcane area of radio frequency allocation. Third World nations
probably have a legitimate interest in insisting that a certain
portion of radio frequencies and communications satellite
positions be reserved for them. Otherwise the developed
countries may occupy all the usable portions of the
electromagnetic spectrum. Then when less developed countries are
finally in a position to, for example, put up their own
communications satellites, it will be a case of "no room at the
inn."
However, these international agreements have been structured
in such a way as to give the Third World a veto over the
microwave transmission of energy generated by a solar power
satellite (SPS). I invite readers to contemplate as a "for
instance" what the OPEC nations might do if development of the
SPS coincided with another oil shortage.
As a final example, it seems abysmally stupid that the INF
Treaty does not permit Pershing missiles to be "destroyed" by
expending then in space launches. Of course, the Pershing
probably couldn't put anything into orbit by itself. However,
from my admittedly non-expert perspective it doesn't seem that
there would be any insuperable problems in mating it with some
other off-the-shelf components as an upper or lower stage. At a
very minimum, it would seem possible to cluster Pershings around
some other expendable launch vehicle (ELV) as solid rocket
boosters (SRBs) thereby increasing that ELV's payload. If you
want to get really exotic, the February/March 1989 issue of "Air
& Space Smithsonian" mentions a scheme to replace the first stage
of the Scout launch vehicle "with an electromagnetic catapult.
This would shoot the rocket along six miles of rails built up the
western slope of a Sierra-Nevada mountain such as Mount Hood or
Mount Shasta." I suspect Pershings could have been launched in
this fashion as well.
However it might have been done, since there are several
hundred Pershings which have to be disposed of, this would seem
to have been a cost-effective program. Also, since U.S. space
launches are generally public, verification problems would seem
to be minimal. One hopes that a similar blunder will not be made
if and when a START Treaty is negotiated.
Treaty restraints aside, the major problem with ORION is
that it would use up fissionable material at a prodigious rate.
In fact one variant of the concept would have used the world's
entire supply of nuclear weapons to power *one* ORION vehicle.
Of course, there are ways of turning this drawback into an
advantage. Apropos of what I mentioned previously, in the
unlikely event that the U.S, the U.S.S.R. and what might be
called the "minor nuclear powers" (if any nation possessing
nuclear weapons can ever be called a minor power) ever *do* agree
on complete nuclear disarmament, ORION might be a practical way
of getting rid of no-longer-wanted warheads. One problem might
be which nation would get to operate the vehicle. Perhaps,
however, there could be one for each nation. "Rigel" for the
United States and "Betelgeuse" for the Soviet Union. A more
practical objection would be that an ORION vehicle would
necessarily be at least semi-expendable. When you run out of
nukes, you've run out of propellant. (Then too, Murphy's Law
being what it is, we will just have finished using up all our
nuclear weapons in this fashion when some unfriendly ETs wander
into the solar system.)
Finally, contrary to suggestions made in the thread on Space
Forum, I do not believe ORION was ever intended to launch
payloads from Earth to LEO. It was supposed to be strictly an
orbital transfer vehicle (OTV).
Also mentioned in the Space Forum thread was DAEDALUS.
Unlike ORION, DAEDALUS was a concept for a true interstellar
vehicle. Put forward by the British Interplanetary Society
(BIS), it envisioned an unmanned 2-stage rocket which would be
used for a flyby mission to Barnard's Star. (Barnard's Star was
selected in preference to the Alpha Centauri star system because
it was considered more likely to have planets. Each stage would
burn for several years and the combined effect of both stages
would be to accelerate the vehicle to a substantial fraction of
the speed of light. The propulsion system would have used
nuclear fusion. However, I'm not sure if it would have involved
pulsed fusion (i.e.--small thermonuclear explosions) or some kind
of continuous output system.
There are a couple of problems with this concept. There
would be no deceleration at the target star, so the vehicle would
obviously pass by it very quickly. In fact, about all DAEDALUS
could have told us is whether Barnard's Star did or didn't have
planets. Also, the propulsion concept involved would have used
helium-3, which is rather rare in this neck of the solar system.
It exists on Earth, but essentially only in trace amounts. There
is some on the Moon, but nowhere near enough.
In fact, the nearest (and perhaps only known) place where it
exists in sufficient quantity is the atmosphere of Jupiter. The
scenario therefore called for DAEDALUS to be built in orbit
around that planet. (Just why this was preferable to building
the vehicle in Earth orbit and towing it out to Jovian orbit for
fueling is something I've never seen explained.)
The biggest objection that I can see to DAEDALUS is that it
would entail too great an investment for a single one-way space
probe. However, the propulsion system concept might find other
applications. For example, DAEDALUS like ORION, could represent
an excellent means of moving very large payloads around the solar
system relatively quickly. For example, since the fuel source is
Jupiter's atmosphere, DAEDALUS might represent an excellent
concept for moving mineral-rich asteroids for from the main belt
to an orbit around Earth where they could be mined. (I believe
it was G. Harry Stine who pointed out that a single nickel-iron
asteroid, one mile in diameter would contain the equivalent of a
couple of centuries of world nickel and iron production, at
mid-1970s rates.)
Another advantage of DAEDALUS over ORION would be fuel
supply. I don't know how much helium-3 is contained in the
Jovian atmosphere. However, since just about everything about
Jupiter is on a Brobdingnagian scale, I suspect there's quite a
bit of it. In particular, there's probably enough to keep a
fleet of very high capability (both in terms of speed and
payload) orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) running for as long as
might be necessary or desirable. As a bonus, once the
infrastructure to support such vehicles was in place, building
one or more interstellar probes might become practical on a
spinoff basis since the additional investment required would come
down to acceptable levels.
Passing on to what Roy Pettis referred to in message #121995
as "reactor-based nuclear propulsion," there were, as I recall
two concepts which, like ORION, were put forward during the
1960s. One was, of course, NERVA. To answer the question
posed by Robert Mockan in message #122023, I believe the other
concept was called DUMBO. DUMBO's performance would have been
superior to that of NERVA. Supposedly, DUMBO could have powered
a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle, which NERVA could not.
One the other hand, the impression I got was that NERVA would
have used more-or-less "off the shelf" technology, whereas DUMBO
would have entailed pushing the technology to "the outside of the
envelope."
However, Roy Pettis was incorrect when he stated in message
#121995 that "reactor-based nuclear rockets put out nothing but
clean hydrogen flames." At least DUMBO (and probably NERVA as
well) would have released some radiation into the atmosphere.
Admittedly, the amount would have been relatively minor. The
estimate I remember seeing for DUMBO was that it could have
orbited 1,000 SKYLAB sized payloads for a radiation release equal
to that caused by one 20-kiloton atmospheric nuclear test.
However, even 20 years ago the intentional release of *any*
nuclear radiation into the atmosphere was politically
intolerable. (It goes without saying that, in the wake of Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl, the situation is even worse today.) I
suspect that this "zero tolerance" for radiation release was as
much if not more of a factor in the demise of research in this
area as was Richard Nixon's perception that "we weren't going to
Mars anytime soon" and that therefore "the nuclear rocket was a
luxury research program."
As somewhat of another digression, I do not believe that
"the SDI technology program is * * * recapturing some of the
nuclear propulsion expertise," as stated by Roy Pettis in message
#122109, at least not directly. As most Space Forum members
know, I follow SDI pretty closely. As far as I know, nuclear
propulsion does not figure in any aspect of the program. What
SDI *is* doing is sponsoring some fairly intense research into
large-output, long-duration, on-orbit power sources. As a
practical matter that means nuclear reactors. One such project
is designated as the SP-100 reactor. "SP" presumably stands for
"space power." "100" refers to the output, but I'm not sure
whether that is intended to indicate 100 kilowatts or 100
megawatts. (I'm also not sure whether the SP-100 is being
developed solely for SDI or is considered to have wider
potential.). In any event, of course, the reactor technology
developed as part of the SP-100 or other SDI-related programs
would probably be adaptable to propulsion systems, at least for
OTVs. This may have been what Roy Pettis had in mind.
While I certainly agree that there is a desperate need for
more efficient propulsion systems, both for Earth-to-LEO launch
vehicles and for OTVs, I don't see nuclear rockets, whether
pulsed or reactor based, fulfilling either of these roles. Nor
do I see a nuclear fusion powered vehicle like DAEDALUS being
used as an OTV.
In the case of OTVs, I think that fusion propulsion systems,
pulsed nuclear propulsion systems and probably reactor based
nuclear propulsion systems as well are going to be leapfrogged by
antimatter propulsion systems. These are not as futuristic as
most people think. The U.S. Air Force has identified antimatter
propulsion as one of a number of critical long-range projects in
which it is interested. Other reports suggest that antimatter
propulsion may become practical as soon as the early years of the
Twenty-first Century.
Furthermore, recent breakthroughs in the field of
superconductivity may have made one technological problem related
to an antimatter propulsion system easier to solve. (Very
powerful magnets are required to confine or direct the particles
resulting from matter-antimatter "annihilation" so that their
energy can be harnessed for propulsive purposes. Shielding is of
course also a problem, especially for a man-rated OTV. However,
it is a problem which (as far as I know) differs only in degree
from nuclear propulsion systems. Moreover, once we gain access
to extraterrestrial materials, we have effectively gained access
to unlimited amounts of mass. And as Jerry Pournelle has pointed
out, mass is the best way to harden or shield anything.
The principal problem delaying the development of antimatter
propulsion is our ability to produce and store sufficient
quantities of antimatter. However, our capabilities in this
regard have been increasing at a fairly steady rate, and
only milligrams, or at most grams, are necessary to power a
highly capable OTV. Hopefully too, the proposed super-conducting
super-collider will, in addition to advancing knowledge in other
areas, tell us something about how to manufacture and store
antimatter.
Antimatter is obviously tricky to handle. It only has to
come into contact with normal matter for an explosion to occur.
Needless to say, this complicates storing it. The usual method
is to suspend it magnetically in a vacuum. However, contrary to
what might be expected, and for certain technical reasons which I
do not profess to fully understand, the larger the amount of
antimatter, the easier it is to store. Also relevant here is the
fact that space gives you plenty of room to do nasty things.
Manufacture and storage of antimatter can take place on-orbit, on
the Lunar surface or at some other remote location. If something
goes "bang," therefore "third party off-site damage" (to use the
nuclear power industry's euphemism) will be minimal or non-
existent.
Of course, as is frequently the case, the most likely
potential "show-stopper" for antimatter propulsion is political.
An antimatter warhead would make nuclear or even thermonuclear
weapons look like firecrackers alongside a hand grenade. In
actuality, this is not as serious as it sounds. Stability has
been an essential requirement for military explosives all the way
back to the days of black powder. For that reason nitroglycerin
was never used in warfare and dynamite was used only more-or-less
experimentally. (A "pneumatic dynamite gun" saw limited service
in the Spanish-American War.) Combined with stability problems
is the fact that the only advantage an antimatter warhead would
have over a nuclear warhead would be greatly increased yield for
its size. However, the recent trend has been towards lower
yield, not higher yield warheads. Likewise, the physical size
and weight of the warhead has long since ceased to be a
significant problem in the design of nuclear weapons. For all of
these reasons it is unlikely that antimatter warheads will ever
be developed.
Lack of stability will also tend to make antimatter
unattractive to terrorist organizations. Even the most
fanatically suicidal terrorists, after all, want to blow up
somebody *in addition to* themselves. The armed forces of a
sovereign nation, especially a superpower, can, if they want to,
afford to expend a great deal of time, effort and money to
develop technology to keep antimatter stable under extreme
conditions. (Although for the reasons previously stated, they
are not likely to want to.) The resources to do so are not
likely to be available to terrorist groups. Finally, if the
manufacture and storage of antimatter takes place at an
extraterrestrial location, then securing the site against
terrorist incursions becomes relatively simple.
As always in the realm of politics, however, what seems to
be is more important than what is. Perception in other words
tend to override reality. If the numerous and vocal technophobes
with whom our society is currently plagued can convince the
public that antimatter presents unacceptable risks, then whether
as a matter of objective fact such is or is not the case
essentially becomes irrelevant.
On the question of Earth-to-LEO launch vehicles, as I
previously mentioned, a necessary precondition for either a
nuclear or fusion rocket is that it emit zero radiation into the
atmosphere. A related problem is that the reactor has to be
designed so as not to release radiation even in the event of a
"worst case" launch or reentry accident. The latter problem
might be soluble (although again, perception, and not just
reality, has to be taken into account). However, I cannot see how
the former could be done with a nuclear powered vehicle. A
fusion powered launch vehicle might be practical in the very long
term, depending on things like shielding requirements and how the
energy of the fusion reactor is converted into thrust.
Obviously, though, such a vehicle is a long way in the future.
For the foreseeable future, therefore, improvements in
launch systems are apt to come from technologies other than
nuclear or fusion propulsion. One possibility is the development
of rockets using more energetic fuels. Metastable helium and
tetrahydrogen (metallic hydrogen) have been mentioned as
possibilities. Monatomic hydrogen, although a long time favorite
with science fiction writers, does not appear to be given much of
a chance of becoming a practical propellant. Be that as it may,
any of these fuels would offer orders-of-magnitude improvements
over present rocket propulsion.
However, while possible these advances do not appear likely
in what might be called the "medium term." ("Medium term" in
this case meaning between now and, say, the second or third
decade of the next century.) During that period the most likely
possibility of major improvements in launch systems involve
techniques that will get around the necessity of having to carry
all the energy needed to accelerate to orbital velocity aboard
the vehicle itself. The system that is currently receiving the
most attention in this regard is, of course, the National
Aerospace Plane (NASP). Whereas the Space Shuttle must carry
both liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in its external tank, the
NASP's on-board tankage will accommodate only hydrogen. Oxygen
will be drawn from the atmosphere. The NASP will also get a
bonus from the fact that its engines will use gaseous rather than
liquid hydrogen. Using air to burn liquid hydrogen produces
several times as much thrust per pound of fuel burned as using
liquid oxygen to burn liquid hydrogen.
Another possibility involves laser propulsion. A powerful
ground based laser would be used to "illuminate" the launch
vehicle. The propellant would probably consist of water, which
the heat from the laser would turn to steam. As far as I know,
this is not being actively pursued at the moment. However, it is
an obvious potential spinoff from the SDI program.
A third type of launch vehicle propulsion system is the
electromagnetic accelerator or "mass driver." While primarily
discussed as a method launching payloads from the Moon, it is
also adaptable to Earth to LEO transportation. The most extreme
concept I've seen was presented as poster session at the
Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing either two or four
years ago. This was dubbed the "Yokohama, Honolulu & Orbital
Railroad." It involved another science-fiction favorite, the
"vacuum tube." A airless tunnel would be constructed under the
Pacific Ocean. The primary purpose would be to carry passengers
and freight between Japan and the U.S. mainland, via Hawaii. One
"branch line," however, would exit through the crater of a
Hawaiian volcano. The launch vehicles would have no on-board
power, but would be accelerated to such speed in the tunnel that
they could "coast" into orbit.
At the other end of the scale, as proposals for mass-driver
propulsion go, is something called "Electro-Scout," which I
mentioned previously in connection with the disposal of Pershing
missiles. Put forward in 1981 by six MIT scientists, it
envisioned constructing a six mile long electromagnetic catapult
on the Western slope of a Sierra-Nevada mountain such as Mount
Hood or Mount Shasta. This would replace the first stage booster
of the Scout launch vehicle. (Hence the name.)
However, the most promising application for a mass driver
launch system would seem to be in combination with either a NASP
derived vehicle or a laser propulsion system.
In the case of the NASP, its primary propulsion system will
consist or supersonic-combustion-ramjet ("scramjet") engines. As
the name implies, these engines can only operate when the airflow
though them reaches supersonic velocities. The NASP will
therefore need an auxiliary propulsion system to accelerate it to
a speed at which a scramjet can operate. Current thinking seems
inclined towards doing this by a combination of turbojet and
conventional (subsonic combustion) ramjet engines. This may
reflect the fact that NASP derived vehicles have potential for
military applications (including launching military payloads),
and as hypersonic transport (HST) civilian airliners, as well as
civilian launch vehicles. For obvious reasons, both the
Department of Defense (DoD) and the airlines want something that
can simply take off from any airport runway of sufficient length.
However, such a capability would be of limited use for a
civilian space launch vehicle. Moreover, the need to have two or
three sets of engines instead of only one would obviously both
increase the complexity of the system and reduce payload. Hence,
the "elegant solution" for a civilian launch vehicle would seem
to be a mass diver, which would accelerate the vehicle to
scramjet speed before it leaves the ground.
In the case of laser propulsion, including a mass driver in
the system goes from being highly desirable to being a virtual
necessity. Some means has to be found of getting the payload up
in the air so that the laser can be focused on it. Related to
this is the fact that a laser works best if installed at the
summit of a high mountain where most of the atmosphere, and
especially most of the atmosphere's water vapor, are below it.
This lends itself very readily to something similar to the
Electro-Scout proposal. In effect, the first stage would be the
mass driver and the second stage would be the laser.
Summing it all up, the proverbial "bottom line" is this:
There clearly exists a great need for improved forms of
propulsion, both for launch vehicles (to reduce the cost-per-
pound of Earth-to-LEO transportation) and for OTVs (to enable us
to move large payloads around the solar system relatively
quickly). However, it does not seem that either pulsed nuclear
power vehicles like ORION or nuclear-reactor powered vehicles
like NERVA or DUMBO or even fusion powered systems like DAEDALUS
represent the likely answer.
In the case of launch vehicles, the release of radiation
into the atmosphere makes nuclear powered systems, if nothing
else, politically impossible. If a fusion powered propulsion
system can be devised that does not entail releasing radiation
into the atmosphere, it may become the basis of a practical
launch system. However, such a vehicle is clearly a long way
off.
As to OTVs, nuclear reactor powered vehicles such as DUMBO
and NERVA are almost certainly practical. Assuming the
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty can be amended and a sufficient supply a
fissionable material is available, so is ORION. Once we have the
ability to construct the necessary infrastructure in orbit around
Jupiter, so is DAEDALUS. The problem with both nuclear and
fusion powered OTVs, however, is that when we are in a position
to build them they may represent an idea who's time has come--and
passed. Antimatter propulsion systems may make them obsolete
before the first one flys. The more advanced the system being
considered the more the force of this point increases.
For example, it is probably hyperbole to say that DUMBO or
even NERVA could be built using off-the-shelf technology.
Nevertheless, a considerable body of knowledge obviously exists
with respect to the design of nuclear reactors in general, and at
least the preliminary work on nuclear rockets has already been
done. A nuclear-reactor propelled OTV would therefore clearly be
the system of choice if, for example, a manned Mars mission were
to be mounted anytime soon. The same is probably true with
respect to establishing and maintaining a permanently manned
Lunar base. The problem is that neither or those missions *are*
going to be undertaken anytime soon. For one thing, the
political will (and hence the money) simply isn't there. In the
case of a Mars mission, moreover, we need to learn a great deal
more about such things as long-term, closed cycle life support
systems and highly reliable fail-safe systems in general before
such an expedition can be mounted.
Fusion powered OTVs are even more questionable. An major
milestone in the development of fusion power is the demonstration
of "zero net." That is, producing a fusion reaction that
generates as much power as it consumes. Ten years ago it was
being predicted that zero net would be demonstrated sometime in
the early 1980s. Current predictions are that it will be
demonstrated in the early 1990s. And, of course, zero net is a
long way from a practical stationary fusion powerplant, much less
a practical OTV propulsion system. The likelihood, therefore, is
that by the time we really need a highly capable OTV antimatter
propulsion system will be a practical option.
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