Build it, try it, hope it doesn’t kill you when it blows up. Eventually you get one that works. That is why the majority of rocket motors today (even used by NASA) trace their origin to the old Soviet Union built under license. Too bad about those failures if the fuel is radioactive.

Plenty of the dead in the old workers paradise that only got rebranded.

might have been a godzilla movie.

neither ended well if i remember right

Fucking Russians.

Perhaps a hot radioisotope might be used to bring conventional easy to handle fuels and oxidizers, such as kerosene and liquid oxygen, to a temperature where they are hypergolic.

Conventional hypergolic propellants, such as dinitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, tend to be toxic and otherwise difficult to store and handle.

An actual nuclear powered rocket test, as opposed to a hot radioisotope assisted chemical rocket, would be a nuclear catastrophe, "successful" or not.

For example, the U.S.A.'a "Project Pluto" of the early 'sixties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

Is this the gizmo in 'The Martian' with Matt Damon?

... why bother with solar panels if you have nuclear power?

Mars ain't gonna give a shit.

Like most anywhere beyond low earth orbit, the surface of mars is bombarded with too much ionizing radiation for human habitation.

RTG are an amazing technology, but not a great idea for a place we might want to live on some day.

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, and are now in interstellar space, and still transmitting scientific data to us. They run on RTG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_%28rover%29

As a chunk of metal or metal oxide plutonium isn't horrifically dangerous . But as a fine dust it's nothing you'd want to inhale or eat. There are plenty of common non-radioactive substances, including substances having a half life of forever, that are more toxic.

Ordinary gasoline and used motor oil are carcinogens and teratogens but nobody cares about those.

Concern about the RTG in "The Martian" was overwrought. One would assume astronauts wouldn't be the sort who'd break open an RTG with a hammer or a rock to see what's inside, not unless the natural Martian background radiation had already fried their minds and bodies, or they'd been partying too hard with ethanol, various oxides of nitrogen, and pharmaceuticals taken from the med kit.

Okay, maybe it wasn't overwrought. Mars is a horrible place to live. On earth a remote arctic or antarctic research station in the dark of winter is a tropical paradise compared to mars. Best make the RTG inaccessible to anyone who has lost their mind.

last year they talked about the russians creating their own project pluto and just how horrifically awful of an idea that was.

when this thing exploded during a missile test and then the report of a nuke spike, this was the first thing I thought of as well.

here's a link to the podcast. it can be dry at times, but never the less it's still really interesting.

https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

These are scary times.

I'm certain Trump's bosses wish they had the same autocratic powers the bosses in Russia and China have.

"national heroes" aren't forced to work with second rate, half assed assembled equipment.

Does nuclear energy power the propellers? Or impellers? Or whatever is providing thrust to keep it aloft? Or does it use more traditional fuel, and then carry a nuclear warhead?

Wiki entry

"9M730 Burevestnik is a Russian experimental nuclear-powered, nuclear- armed cruise missile under development for the Russian Armed Forces"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

the heat from the reactor provides the thrust...

This missile as a result will be very slow-moving relatively (subsonic) and as simple to shoot down as a conventional subsonic aircraft, but it would be highly controllable and theoretically able to stay in the air indefinitely... (If they can actually make it work, of course).

The USAF in the late 50s and 60s experimented with this, but it was an engineering and environmental nightmare...

Simple to shoot down a flying nuclear reactor? Lovely.