Nuclear thermal/electrical propulsion

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>>8926554
more than some magical new propulsion technique, we would be better off if we finally did away with launching everything from the fucking earth.
Moon has fraction of the gravity and you can construct and launch much bigger ships from it.

>>8926554
You don't need efficiency if you have nuclear power.

>>8926623
But is there any fossil fuels on the moon?

Nuclear would probably be ideal if nerva didn't get shut down in the 60's. But electric has the best potential.

>>8926659
no, but there is hydrogen

>>8926676

Where?

Chemical is fine, its just that you need to refuel at the destination to land on something like Jupiter

The reactor would also be useful for power supply out past Mars

>>8926722
on the moon

>>8926653
You do.
Otherwise you end up needing 2-3x the amount of engines, fuel and tank just to get any significant payload mass anywhere

>>8927083
are they efficient enough to reach space?

>>8926676
You mean Helium-3?

>>8927181
That requires thrust.
Isp and thrust are often negatively correlated,unless you can brute-force more energy into the reaction mass to make it travel faster

NTR propulsion was already a proven technology 50 years ago, the only reason it's not being used is there's no demand for what it's good for (transferring large payloads from LEO to the moon/other planets and back)

>>8927181
you wouldn't use a nuclear rocket to get into leo. usually it would be assembled in space and then it takes advantage of the high isp to go to distant planets, not like a chemical for the moon.

>>8926554
Very feasible if we put the money down. NERVA and its contemporaries showed a lot of promise. That said it isn't feasible at all because no one will put the money down and even if they did hippies would try and kill it because mai nuclear is bad meme.


>>8928050
Lunar He-3 is a meme. You need to process millions of tons of regolith to get any appreciable amount.

>>8928050
No, anon means hydrogen. Hydrogen has been found in lunar soil at about 50 ppm.
http://www.permanent.com/l-apollo.htm
In certain types of lunar soil water has been found in concentrations as high as 615 to 1400 ppm:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/05/25/science.1204626

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water

the LCROSS mission also found water in concentrations of 5.6 ± 2.9% by mass in the regolith of the dark crater that LCROSS impacted:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6003/463