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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 17, 2014 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Igor Eberstein

"Nuclear Rockets for the Future"

ABSTRACT -- This talk will describe a nuclear powered spaceship for use in traveling to Mars. The ship would be assembled in Earth orbit. At first, the ship would be used at first for commuting between the orbits of Earth and the Moon. Later, it would commute between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

A nuclear powered rocket in which the propellant is heated in a graphite core powered by nuclear fission can give a specific impulse of at least five times that of hydrogen/LOX if helium is used as a propellant: this system should be adequate for travel to Mars. For travel to the Moon, a less capable, but much simpler alternative is to use a silicon carbide core, with steam as propellant.

The talk will also describe a grass roots program for organizing support for such a project.

SPEAKER -- Dr. Igor Eberstein is a member of Goddard's emeritus program.

He has Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from the Cooper Union in New York City and a Doctorate in Aeronautical Engineering from Princeton.  He served an internship at Brookhaven National Laboratory, while they had a nuclear reactor.  Before arriving at Goddard, he taught engineering science at Yale, worked on missile defense at Avco-Everett Research Laboratory in Boston, and post-doctoral work on the Venus greenhouse effect with Carl Sagan at Harvard-Smithsonian.

He came to Goddard as a National Academy Resident Research Associate to study gravity-acoustic waves in the stratosphere and mesosphere.  After becoming a civil servant, he worked on atmospheric ozone, and later, on supercomputers. He retired as head of the INSPIRE program, part of the education office, when that program ended.  He also served as executive vice president of the Goddard Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians Association (IFPTE Local 29.)

His projects since retirement have included a study of the solar cycle, advanced education projects and the future of nuclear propulsion.




Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov