Will SpaceX ever go nuclear propulsion?

[docmordrid]

But getting cargo from Earth vicinity to Mars vicinity doesn't take much delta-v. I don't think fission fragment makes ANY sense for that trip. NTR makes more sense than fission fragment for that sort of thing.

That is one clever way to get a lot of reuse out of MCT and BFR, but it'd only work really for cargo because of safety and the long trip times.

The question was SpaceX and nuclear propulsion.

Surface nuclear (and the work at LANL has plans up to 2MWe IIRC) is another topic.

The problem is that existing nuclear reactor options for propulsion are complex and a lot of the initial work would be "archeological engineering." The cycle of an FFR is relatively benign in terms of temperatures and neutron generation which should simplify the shielding, fueling and moderating.

The thing is NTR has very poor T/W, although some very speculative designs were talking about 40:1 even if that were possible I'm not sure the Isp of about 2x that of LO2/LH2 is worth that kind of money.

But an Isp of 100 000 secs? That's about 3x the Isp of an ion thruster and a thrust in 10s of Newtons (has anyone actually built a 1N electric thruster yet?)

Using a sub escape velocity upper stage to push payloads to Mars is a neat trick I first saw in the REL "Troy" study for a Skylon based Mars expedition. IMHO it's one I think should be in the tool box of any   exploration architecture programme manager for wherever you're going and with whatever engine.

NASA Glenn reports up to 100 Newtons  for an MPD thruster

Link....

Testing for these thrusters has demonstrated exhaust velocities of 100,000 meters per second (over 200,000 mph) and thrust levels of 100 Newtons (22.5 pounds) at power levels of 1 megawatt.