원자력과 추진 격차 보고서 (Report of the Nuclear Power and Propulsion Gap Assessment Team)
본 보고서는 국제 우주 탐사 목표를 달성하기 위해 채워야 할 원자력 기술의 격차를 설명하고 평가하고 있습니다.
The international space community is in the process of implementing the first elements of an international architecture to explore the Moon and Mars in the near- and mid-term future. This exploration architecture requires continuous and long-duration human and robotic presence, including operations during the long lunar night or in permanently shadowed regions on the Moon, or on the Martian surface when sunlight is diminished due to extended dust storms, season, or latitude. This makes the implementing organizations - governmental as well as commercial - stakeholders of technology solutions for these challenging mission applications. The absence of continuous solar power allows two viable technical solutions: energy storage that is recharged with solar power, or nuclear systems. Chemical-based energy storage solutions present significant mass penalties resulting from thermal engineering, physical constraints, and environmental conditions - hundreds of kilograms even for small robotic systems designed for surviving the lunar night. Given the significant transportation cost to the lunar and Martian surfaces and the desire to not only survive, but safely operate in these environments, nuclear systems offer a better solution. Similarly, human Mars missions can benefit significantly from the high specific impulse of nuclear propulsion systems, far beyond what is possible with non-nuclear systems.