Nuclear industry on the way to space

Abstract

This paper compares, on a high level, properties of chemically driven space vehicles to those of space vehicles using nuclear power and electric propulsion, based on the conservation of momentum and freely abundant data. At hand of this example it shows that nuclear propulsion can offer a significant advantage over chemical drive. Thereby the paper explains why nuclear is so important for space technology and why nuclear industry is more and more interested in space travel and space technology.