Finger 2011 Final

“The 1960’s Space Nuclear Propulsion Office -- That is Necessary Now”

Harold B. Finger Former Manager SNPO

It is now over 40 years since our country demonstrated, through extensive component and system development and full engine testing, the capability of a nuclear reactor powered thermal rocket system for deep space missions including Mars exploration including humans. I have been bemoaning this situation for the many years since the program achieved major demonstrated advances in the 1950’s and primarily through the 1960’s when we were certainly ready to start planning for early human exploration to deep space including Mars but the program was closed out in 1973. And with our current economic troubles and governmental financial obligations, that situation is certainly not ended. But I still cannot give up because I am convinced that such exploration is important to our society, our international standing, and to the stimulation of our young people in advanced sciences and technology.

We need the kind of emphasis that the Mars Society, with the outstanding leadership of Dr. Robert Zubrin, has been providing and I thank you all very much for your very significant work in this area. Let’s all keep working to retrieve that technological capability and improve on it through a joint effort of the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as we had achieved early capability in the AEC-NASA Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO) established in 1960 through its joint interagency management and its diverse and very strong government and industry science and technology development capability.

So here again is a review of the history of that period of nuclear reactor thermal rocket propulsion accomplishments that we had achieved and that we should regain and improve on further with currently available technology and apply them for significant Mars mission accomplishments and leadership. I entered that program actively when responsibility for the nuclear rocket propulsion and vehicle development was transferred from the Army Air Force to the newly established NASA by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presidential Executive Order on October 1, 1958. I was immediately assigned as the NASA man to work with the Air Force and the AEC during the transfer process. After extensive and even controversial congressional and interagency negotiations, T. Keith Glennan, NASA’s first Administrator and John A. McCone, Chairman of the AEC signed a Memorandum of Understanding and a News Release was issued on August 31, 1960 naming me as Manager and Milton Klein of the AEC as Deputy Manager of the AEC-NASA Nuclear Propulsion Office, which was very soon renamed the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office. The organization was made up of NASA and AEC personnel and members of the Air Force group that had been in the previous group. It was clearly established that the AEC would fund the required nuclear reactor development work and NASA would fund development of the non-nuclear components and integration of the reactor into the full rocket engine and vehicle system. Starting from the establishment of SNPO, and including the graphite reactor work that had already been underway at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory since the 1950’s for possible aircraft and missile application, we moved very quickly to initiate action on key elements that we determined were necessary to accomplish the full scope of the program. (Figure 1) That brought Aerojet-General and Westinghouse in for the NERVA ( Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) development and Lockheed to develop the Reactor In-Flight Test System (RIFT) for flight testing of the NERVA engine. We also expanded the test facility capabilities in Nevada to include multiple reactor tests and full engine system testing. At that early time, Los Alamos had already tested two KIWI-A reactors (Figure 2) at about 80 megawatts (Mw) of power and then tested a third in October, 1960 at 100 Mw that had each run with gaseous hydrogen and water cooled jet nozzles for about 5 minutes in the first test cell at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station (NRDS) at Jackass Flats in Nevada.

The team running the program in Los Alamos was outstanding and fully dedicated to the effort they had undertaken to develop a graphite reactor technology for rocket propulsion application. Here (Figure 3) I am with some of the leading Los Alamos people who were responsible throughout the program for their outstanding accomplishments – Director Norris Bradbury in the background, Raemer Schreiber, Roderick Spence, Keith Boyer, Frank Durham, and two others. Their leadership, dedication, and capabilities in this graphite reactor development were outstanding. They moved on from these first reactors to developing and testing several Kiwi-B reactors that were designed for 1000 Mw to achieve 50,000 pounds of thrust using liquid hydrogen to this KIWI-B4A (Figure 4) with niobium carbide protective coating on the fuel elements. That preferred design reactor was installed and put to test on November 13, 1962 with all our very high expectations. But flashes of light in the exhaust nozzle quickly revealed serious core damage as the power went over 250 Mw so, obviously, the test was shut down after only several seconds. That really had us worried.

And one week after our failed Rover KIWI-B4A, on December 7, 1962 (Figure 5) President Kennedy and Vice-President Johnson visited Los Alamos and the next day the President, with his large entourage, flew to the NRDS to visit the test site and review the whole program. Included in that group were Senator Clinton Anderson, Cong. Morris, Glenn Seaborg, Bob Seamans, Jerome Wiesner, McGeorge Bundy, Pierre Salinger, Harold Brown, James Ramey, Dwight Ink, and others. Of course, at that time, we still did not have any understanding of the cause of the obviously unexpected and, for all of us in the program, very troubling failure of the KIWI-B4A. But it was apparent during that time with the President that with the possible exception of Jerry Wiesner, the President’s Science Advisor, work on the nuclear rocket propulsion would be well supported. So it was certainly an exciting and very encouraging meeting even with the uncertainty all of us in the program felt because of the failed test..

Of course, the President had expressed his support of the program about a year and a half before the KIWI-B4A test, on May 25, 1961 when he had significantly emphasized the need for nuclear propelled systems in his truly historic “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs.” In that speech, his major proposal was “that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” He emphasized all that would be required to accomplish it and that “all of us must work to achieve it.” And his second proposal in that speech was to “accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.” Yes, his support had been clearly expressed and was confirmed in our on-site NRDS meeting.

After the gathering with the President, I called a meeting of the key members of our SNPO and the Los Alamos team, with representatives from the NASA Langley and Lewis Labs and the Marshall Space Flight Center to review the status of the program. At that meeting, I made and expressed my decision that we would have no further hot testing of a full reactor until thorough work was done to identify the causes of the failure and develop clear solutions. With some objections from Dr. Bradbury, we went through comprehensive component, subsystem, and vibration testing, with all participants involved, including a cold flow non-fissioning system test that clearly showed that the problem was the result of Los Alamos having placed a peripheral seal around the inlet end of the full reactor core so that the low exit pressure surrounding that large cluster of graphite fuel elements permitted interstitial flow between those elements causing them to vibrate and fail. It was an obvious error. Westinghouse had already been working on increased bundling of the core in the NERVA reactor and obviously the seal was placed at the exit of the core but they were also working on even increased lateral support.

From then on, (Figure 6) with our very extensive testing, there was great improvement. Los Alamos got back to very encouraging and successful KIWI reactor testing and moved on to the Phoebus reactors operating up to 4200 Mw. Aerojet and Westinghouse NERVA reactor tests started in 1964 including one with full power operation at 1100 Mw for 62 minutes on December 13, 1967. And then we also had a full 1100 Mw NERVA XE engine test in 1969 (Figure 7) in our engine test stand. The engine of over 50,000 pounds of thrust concluded our testing after it was run for four hours with 28 starts. Our earlier proposed flight test program had been previously killed in 1965 so our active nuclear rocket development program really ended in 1969.

Yes, we did develop and had demonstrated the nuclear rocket propulsion system that could move us forward to planning and developing substantial deep space missions in 1970 – over 40 years ago. And here are some of the mission analyses we did during those years for these developed nuclear propelled rocket systems showing the benefits they would provide. Here (Figure 8) is the comparison of payloads achieved with a nuclear third stage on two stages of the Saturn V vehicle compared to the chemical third stage. A good fifty percent increase in payload is obvious. And here (Figure 9) is the comparison of the Earth-orbit weight required for a round trip manned Mars mission we were thinking of in the mid 60’s for various launch years using a nuclear or chemical upper stage system. Needless to say, we did major mission analyses and I am sure you are not at all surprised to find such significant benefits with thermal nuclear rocket propulsion.

So let’s get back to work and retrieve that proven nuclear rocket propulsion technology that we had developed over 40 years ago and move it forward with currently available further advanced technology and with a similarly strong interagency organizational structure. Let’s achieve that versatile and secure nuclear space exploration capability for extensive Mars exploration and for other missions to grow our knowledge of the universe around us and assure that we maintain and grow our leadership. FIGURES