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Trump leaves space nuclear policy executive order for Biden team
A hot fire test of the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was not completed as planned. The SLS is the vehicle meant to propel a crewed mission to the moon in 2024. Source: NASA Television
Among the executive orders President Trump issued during his last weeks in office was “Promoting Small Modular Reactors for National Defense and Space Exploration,” which builds on the Space Policy Directives published during his term. The order, issued on January 12, calls for actions within the next six months by NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD), together with the Department of Energy and other federal entities. Whether the Biden administration will retain some, all, or none of the specific goals of the Trump administration’s space nuclear policy remains to be seen, but one thing is very clear: If deep space exploration remains a priority, nuclear-powered and -propelled spacecraft will be needed.
The prospects for near-term deployment of nuclear propulsion and power systems in space improved during Trump’s presidency. However, Trump left office days after a hot fire test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket did not go as planned. The SLS rocket is meant to propel crewed missions to the moon in 2024 and to enable a series of long-duration lunar missions that could be powered by small lunar reactor installations. The test on January 16 of four engines that were supposed to fire for over eight minutes was automatically aborted after one minute, casting some doubt that a planned November 2021 Artemis I mission can go ahead on schedule.
Ronald D. Boyd, Sr., Aaron M. May
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 129-141
Technical Paper | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9367
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-heat-flux (HHF) removal (HHFR) limits can be formidable technological barriers that prevent or limit the normal implementation or optimization of new and novel devices or processes. A conjugate heat transfer HHFR simulation methodology has been developed with excellent resulting accuracy (>98.0% accurate) for predicting HHF amplification (peaking factors) and the peak flow channel inside wall temperature. The methodology can be used directly or expanded to a correlation form. Although the simulation utilized axial and swirl water flows with single-phase fully developed turbulent and subcooled flow boiling in a single-side-heated circular inside flow channel with a rectangular outer boundary, the methodology appears to be fluid- and flow regime-independent (e.g., applicable to developing or jet impingement flows) so that other fluids (e.g., gases, dielectric liquids, liquid metals) and flow regimes can be employed possibly for HHFR applications requiring specialized fluids and/or flow conditions. However, more work is required to validate the applicability of this methodology (and the correlation) to other fluids, flow regimes, and channel materials. Further, the approach can be expanded possibly to include applications employing a hypervapotron for HHFR. For the prototypic simulation cases (38.0 MW/m2) considered, the circumferential inside flow channel heat transfer coefficient distribution [h([varphi])] was not known a priori, so, h([varphi]) was determined from the unknown local inside wall heat flux via iterative finite element conjugate heat transfer analyses for flow regimes ranging from fully developed turbulent subcooled flow boiling (at the top of the flow channel) to single-phase turbulent flow (at the bottom of the flow channel).