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NASA’s push for a new nuclear rocket engine is not just another upgrade to the hardware we strap to the bottom of spacecraft.

NASA is partnering with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to use a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, according to reports. In a press release on Tuesday, NASA said the ...

(CNN) — A nuclear thermal rocket engine in development could one day transport humans to Mars. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the US Department of Defense, and NASA ...

There are many ways to get around space, but most of them are pretty slow. This is why, even when launching at an optimal time, a spacecraft leaving Earth requires about six months to reach orbit ...

February 13, 2009 Technology capable of generating electricity by extracting energy from heat that is otherwise just wasted is a fairly new branch of renewable technology. A typical co-generation ...

What does your engine look like on the inside as it warms up? Aside from some "Honey I shrunk the kids" scenario in which you could protect yourself from heat and the mechanical bits inside your ...

You may not hear about the thermal efficiency of engines much: It's the ratio of how efficiently they use the energy in the fuel they burn. Conventional gasoline engines have long run about 25 percent ...