核热推进技术简述

传统化学能推进技术已达到技术瓶颈,太阳能、电能推进技术尚存在转换效率低、工作条件严苛等问题,亟须新的推进技术满足人类对空间探索的需求。核热推进系统具有高比冲、高有效载荷比、长寿命、高环境适应性等显著优点,并且由于其极高的能量密度被认定是未来数十年间最有可能广泛应用于太空探索的能量来源。文章简要介绍了核热推进发展的数十年间所提出的几类主要构想或已有设计,并阐述了核热推进的未来发展趋势。

The traditional chemical energy propulsion technology has reached the technical bottleneck,but the solar electric energy propulsion technology still has some problems,such as low conversion efficiency and harsh working conditions.Therefore,new propulsion technology is urgently needed to meet the needs of human space exploration.Nuclear thermal propulsion system has the advantages of high specific impulse,high payload ratio,long life and high environmental adaptability,and it is considered as the most likely energy source for space exploration in the next decades due to its extremely high energy density.This paper briefly introduces several main ideas or existing designs put forward in the development of nuclear thermal propulsion in the past decades,and expounds the future development trend of nuclear thermal propulsion.