Testing and Development Progress for the Safe Affordable Fission Engine (SAFE) Testing Series in the High Power Propulsion Thermal Simulator (HPPTS) at Marshall Space Flight Center
- Marshall Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Huntsville, Alabama, 35812 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, US Department of Energy, PO Box 1663, MS J576, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)
- ITT Research Institute, Marshall Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Huntsville, Alabama, 35812 (United States)
- Advanced Methods and Materials, 510 Lawrence Expressway, Suite 203, Sunnyvale, California, 94086 (United States)
Successful development of space fission systems will require an extensive program of affordable and realistic testing. In addition to tests related to design/development of the fission system, realistic testing of the actual flight unit must also be performed. Testing can be divided into two categories, non-nuclear tests and nuclear tests. Full power nuclear tests of space fission systems are expensive, time consuming, and of limited use, even in the best of programmatic environments. If the system is designed to operate within established radiation damage and fuel burn up limits while simultaneously being designed to allow close simulation of heat from fission using resistance heaters, high confidence in fission system performance and lifetime can be attained through a series of non-nuclear tests. Non-nuclear tests are affordable and timely, and the cause of component and system failures can be quickly and accurately identified. The Safe Affordable Fission Engine (SAFE) test series, whose ultimate goal is the demonstration of a 400 kW flight configuration system, has demonstrated that realistic testing can be performed using non-nuclear methods. This test series, carried out in collaboration with other NASA centers, other government agencies, industry, and universities, successfully completed a testing program with a 30 kWt core, Stirling engine, and ion engine configuration. Additionally, a 100 kWt core is in fabrication and appropriate test facilities are being reconfigured. This paper describes the current SAFE non-nuclear tests, which includes test article descriptions, test results and conclusions, and future test plans. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21167914
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP'02: 2002 International congress on advances in nuclear power plants, Hollywood, FL (United States), 9-13 Jun 2002; Other Information: Country of input: France; 9 refs
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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