Dark Fission Space Systems

While the final 2024 spending bill for NASA is a bit of a mixed bag, it's an entirely good news story for nuclear thermal propulsion - and for commercial providers in particular. This wasn't lost on my Dark Fission Space Systems co-founders and myself. As Jeff Foust notes: "The final bill provides significant funding for nuclear propulsion work in the agency’s space technology directorate, with $110 million for nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) and $50 million for nuclear electric propulsion. The NTP funding includes $10 million to accelerate development of an operational NTP system with commercial partners concurrent with the DRACO project that NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration is cooperating with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on." Right on! We need an analog of the successful commercial crew and cargo initiatives to work the transportation story above Low Earth Orbit, and the sooner the better. Civil, commercial, and defense missions will all benefit from fast, efficient transport throughout cislunar space - and we intend to be the preferred provider. 🚀

Timely stuff! Nathan M. just penned a very insightful article in Substack on where we've been (and where we could ultimately go) with nuclear power in space. My company, Dark Fission Space Systems, gets a shout out near the end - primarily for taking on the Goliaths of the aerospace industry and working to get on orbit with some game-changing propulsion. His comment's worth quoting here: "DARPA recently started a program (in collaboration with NASA) called Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) that was awarded to Lockheed Martin early last year. The Lockheed Martin award is for hundreds of millions over the full life of the program and may get to orbit by 2028 - maybe. There is also a start up competitor called Dark Fission Space Systems with some very top shelf folks from DARPA, Astra and others (Dr. Fred Kennedy, who was the founding director of the Space Development Agency and a former DARPA TTO office director is CEO) that is aiming to get there even sooner and for far less money. "Once again a start up with a more focused mission, more dedicated team and no big prime bureaucracy/brain damage to contend with takes on a big prime like David & Goliath. Let’s see who gets there first!" I love it. We are indeed on a mission to get to orbit quickly, knock down the regulatory barriers to operating nuclear systems in space, and open not just the cislunar domain but the entire solar system with rapid, ultra-efficient transport. And - we're looking for help to make it happen. 🚀

I've been wanting to comment on the "official" news from Jeff Foust that SpaceX's Starship will require nearly 20 propellant launches to aggregate enough methalox to get Starship to the lunar surface and back (presumably leaving a little cargo behind). My back-of-the-envelope (Excel) take suggests - if you ignore concerns like boiloff - it's something on the order of 13 launches for about 1.2 million kg of propellant. That's still an awful lot. This is why, as we decide how best to set up a cislunar architecture and economy, we really ought to take a cue from the folks who do terrestrial intermodal transportation. There's good economic reasons for why we don't drive container ships onto dry land and distribute CONEX boxes to every Walmart and Target across the country. You shift to more efficient means of transport at key nodes (e.g., ports), ones that are tailored to the specific leg you're using. Once you get to LEO, you need to shift to in-space transport (an orbital transfer vehicle or OTV) and leave all that inert mass behind. I'm obviously supportive of nuclear thermal for this leg, since you can leverage its high thrust (thus short transfer times) and high specific impulse (thus low propellant mass). Lightweight nuke thermal's a plus. Once you get to low lunar, you shift again, this time to a lander which can make the descent to the lunar surface and back. If you do this right, you end up with a single mission deploying a nuclear thermal OTV, a lunar lander, and a decently-sized payload (10 tons) to the lunar surface, all on a single Starship launch. Now you're all set. The next mission just has to deploy a payload and propellant for the two in-space transport vehicles - you already have the OTV and lander residing in their parking orbits (LEO/LLO). So you can push more cargo to the lunar surface on each run. No waiting to aggregate thirteen Starship loads of prop every time you want to head to the Moon. That translates to big savings. Note that this approach offers the potential for a much faster buildup of capability on the Moon (not to mention other destinations (GEO, LaGrange Points, asteroids, etc.), which will also profit from greater accessibility by virtue of implementing intermodal orbital transport). What are we waiting for? 🚀 https://lnkd.in/e4gJSCAW