Seeded Hydrogen in Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Engines

What is it about?

Nuclear thermal propulsion has the advantage of having high thrust and high efficiency which is important for round trip manned missions to Mars. An engineering challenge with this engine is the hydrogen propellant which has low density and high energy storage. To mitigate these challenges, a heavy noble gas impurity such as argon is mixed with hydrogen. This results in smaller vehicle size and lower required reactor power while decreasing the engine efficiency slightly but still resulting in advantageous performance over traditional chemical rocket engines.

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