To win the race to Mars, NASA is prepared to go nuclear

Boca Chica Texas April 20th 2023 to the cheers of SpaceX staffers Starship clears the tower as it Roars off the launch path air after chamber pressures a critical first test of the biggest rocket ever built with twice the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that lifted Apollo Astronauts to the moon going through the period of Maximum aerodynamic pressure they'll need the power the power if Starship is to one day send astronauts to the moon and Elite Mars but only three minutes into flight the rocket booster failed to separate then four minutes into flight ground controllers hit the self-destruct button the crowd cheered that Starship had gotten this far seated in the control room Elon Musk had warned the chances of success were really only 50 50. Starship just experienced what we call a rapid unscheduled disassembly not only did it disassemble the force of the rocket destroyed the launch pad itself yet despite a bad start both SpaceX and NASA insist they're committed to Starship first two land astronauts on the moon but ultimately to carry astronauts to Mars as soon as 2040 eventually building human colonies in 2021 Elon Musk told me Humanity must Reach For Mars and Beyond if we are to survive I think it's important that Humanity become a multi-planet species and that we extend Consciousness in Life as We Know It beyond Earth and there's another motivator China U.S generals warn China appears determined to create a military presence in space starting with the lunar surface it's already built a robotic base on The Far Side of the Moon with plants to land its own astronauts by 2030. on Mars Only the U.S Russia and China have successfully landed robotic Rovers but the U.S has had far more success Washington state democratic congressman Adam Smith is the ranking member on the armed services committee is it imperative that the U.S gets to Mars before Russia or China you know China's a major power were a major power if we stumble into conflict that has huge negative implications for the entire planet and for space as well but in the short term yeah we we need to be competitive Here China I think is very aggressive president XI Ching Pang has made it clear that he thinks that the U.S is a disappearing power and he wants to replace us so that competition is real in a lot of places and certainly it's real in space it's real in the race for the moon and in the race from Mars now NASA is preparing to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually Mars but faster a round-trip Mission to Mars could take two to three years just keeping a crew fed would be a massive challenge then there's the risk of prolonged exposure to fatal doses of space radiation so to cut the travel time America Is Going Back to the Future this project was called nerva nuclear engine for Rocket vehicle applications to the 1960s and a government program most Americans have never heard of to develop nuclear-powered Rockets someday a manned trip to Mars and return may become the mission assignment it turns out they made big progress back in the 60s running big expensive tests these tests will complete the technology for a nuclear rocket engine DARPA fast forward to today and NASA and a pentagon Department called DARPA the defense Advanced research projects agency are going back to their grandfather's program's 50 plus years ago three two one booster's indignation and liftoff of Artemis one the goal sending astronauts to the moon and Beyond on nuclear rockets look at the the clarity of this look this is a Star Nursery this is the cosmic soup that create Stars NASA Chief Bill Nelson future missions will have international astronauts we go openly back to the moon and then to Mars the Chinese government is very secretive and a lot of their plans involve their military preparations and so there's a reason for us to get there first and that's what we're going to do why go nuclear because from the earliest days of mercury Gemini and Apollo to Artemis and SpaceX Rockets have relied on liquid fuel which burns up quickly when the Apollo Astronauts went to the moon they needed five of these massive F1 engines just to get them off the Earth and escape the Earth's gravitational pull seven and a half million pounds of thrust here at the U.S Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville they've got an exact replica to scale of the Saturn V 363 feet tall future astronauts will need that kind of lift but once they're in space they can use a much smaller engine a nuclear engine to go all the way to Mars and back a fraction of the size and that engine could last 20 years wow this is a big place it's happening now at the Marshall test flight center in Huntsville it's not just Theory so what is this here this is this is a nuclear test chamber this is where they put components of nuclear thermal Rockets such as this fuel element here and like the one that you're holding these are the building blocks for America's future nuclear propulsion going to space yes DARPA program manager Dr Tabitha Dobson has pulled out the old blueprint scent dusted off the test engines from the 1960s but in the early 70s the government canceled the program amid public concern about nuclear safety fast forward to today and an added geostrategic imperative we need to look at what does the United States have which gives us that leap ahead advantage over our adversaries in our near peers the Chinese the Chinese and and others so we don't want to be on par with with our with our adversaries we want to be ahead of them we're and we have the means to do so and this is it nuclear yes energy from fission and it turns out the U.S appears to be light years ahead with nuclear Rockets today Dr Stephanie Tompkins leads DARPA created after Russia's Sputnik satellite caught America by surprise well the technology from the 60s never was given a chance to achieve its full potential so a lot of amazing work went into it when I go back and I read the reports from those days I am continually reminded that we all get to stand on the shoulders of giants for the first time men from Earth will set foot on another planet today's nuclear rocket program called Draco is different inside the rocket a small nuclear reactor with graphite elements rather than using weapons gray uranium it uses high assay low enriched uranium common in research reactors and capable of generating tremendous heat liquid hydrogen moves through the channels in the core heating to 4 000 degrees that gas is then shot through a nozzle to provide thrust 330 000 gallons of fuel to fire for 30 minutes from Mission to Mars a nuclear Rocket's much smaller propellant tank able to carry much heavier cargo traveling faster and further using nuclear thermal propulsion it'll cut down travel time by at least a third of the time so that's cutting days out of the trip to the moon and months out of the trip to Mars yes exactly that's valuable time it is can we sustain human life in a crew all the way for two years the first time we go to Mars that's pushing it so if we can get there faster then that's what we need to do and that's what this nuclear propulsion will do and it's safe NASA and DARPA insists of the Rocket's nuclear thermal reactor will never be tested here on Earth so the Draco test will happen in Space the first since the 1970s scheduled now for 2026 at a safe distance from Earth if there were any sort of an a nuclear accident in space when you're testing this could that radiation come down to earth no so we have chosen our altitude such that we are far away enough from the earth and the farther away you get from the earth the longer you stay in space that we will stay put in space long enough such that those radiation products will never make their way back to Earth for hundreds of years yes okay but How likely is it that humans Americans will actually travel to Mars by 2040 as NASA suggests and do we really need to send humans to Mars as an astrophysicist we figured out some decades ago that I I could send you or I can send a robot to this destination America's Best Known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is skeptical I'm all for people in space but to accomplish scientific goals the robot can live off of sunlight and you can't robot is not going to cry because we ran out of money we can't bring it back you don't see this happening in the near term correct unless there's a geopolitical force operating such as what happened with Sputnik okay what would that be China says leak a memo saying they want to put military bases on Mars we're there in 12 months three months to fund design build the spaceship nine months to take it there but Elon Musk is all in we need to get Starship operational in order to have a base on the moon and be able to send people to Mars musk has plans to build a colony on Mars back in 2021 he talked about his hope for his Starship to carry humans to the moon and then the red planet because gravity on Mars is just a third of Earth's gravity a rocket would not need as much power to return to Earth musk's plan is to reuse Rockets just like airplanes the risk is is not zero this is a it's a hard it's a hard thing to accelerate put so much energy in something and then take it out on the return it's a very hard thing so it's one of the hardest things so you just can't get to zero risk we'll do everything we can to get as close as possible to zero risk just as Sputnik lit the fire for America Space Program China's Ambitions may be having a similar effect today fact that we now have a very aggressive competitor I think all the more makes it a space race thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app