Can Nuclear Propulsion Take Us to Mars?

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Credits:
Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Animator: Mike Ridolfi
Sound: Graham Haerther
Fact Checker: Charlie Garcia
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster


References
[7] Rocket Propulsion Elements
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.


Songs:


Thank you to my patreon supporters: Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung

[RealEngineering]

Woops. The outro audio revealed Real Sciences next video by mistake. It's gonna be a banger though, ye should subscribe.

[ronkirk]

I'm a 72 year old retired mechanical engineer and really feel lucky to have lived during the time we began to explore space with methods other than just telescopes. Just hope I live long enough to see a manned mission to Mars. Fingers crossed! Having just discovered your channel, I'm doing a little binge watching. Keep up the great videos.

[Larsosborne]

Hey Brian,
I'm just a rocket engineer telling you that you did a fantastic job on this video. You explained everything perfectly and all of the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. You should be proud of this one!

[benmcreynolds]

I have always dreamed about us setting up a secondary launch point from the moon. Where we use a large portion of fuel to escape the earth. But, then refuel on a base at the moon and go from there with more fuel then we've ever had and the moon has way lesser gravity so it'll make this super effective towards efficiency.

[robinodonnell]

Me, who got a B- in Chemistry: *scratches chin* Ahh that makes sense.

[MATTWR]

Pretty amazing for a species that just figured out flight in 1903.

[ansg]

The only engineering channel on youtube with references.

[skipp]

Ion propulsion looks like it is straight out of science fiction. Amazing! So cool to see that it is probably gonna be a big part of the future.
Just imagining a large space craft slowly drift with ion thrusters only to then fire up chemical combustion engines in a giant explosion in order to decelerate close to a celestial body has me creaming myself :O

[mrphysics]

They might be able to get around the leakage issue with liquid hydrogen by liningg the interior of the tanks with multiple layers of graphene and holding it at a static potential to repel the attoms although that comes with other challenges.

[KhAnubis]

These animations seriously keep getting better and better

[csnider_]

I was just about to get up and actually do something today.. that’ll have to wait 20mins

[konradd]

I just wanted to let you know that your videos pulled me out of a dark place of looming midlife crisis in my early 40's. I've started using Brilliant so I can be better at Maths and use it in my current CS degree with Machine Learning and AI. Thanks a lot! Greetings from Dublin!

[guz]

I'm in love with this channel. It's so easy to understand and encourage to learn more
Thank you so much

[danyalag]

Any problem in the world: exists
Nuclear Energy: Sounds like a job for me.

[niklasheese]

1.: You got a new animator or the animator learned a lot
2.: The videos got longer
3.: I like that

(That is true for both the x-15 and this video)

[tejasraysad]

Hats off to the explanation!, All the complicated concepts in such simple explanation is an work of art... Seriously impressed by the explanation, Keep doing this...

[ChrisM-tnhx]

Great video. I've always wanted to put myself on a learning path to better understand these questions, so took you up on the Brilliant offer. :)

[Balin_James]

I feel silly for not knowing ion thrusters are real. That blue glow is so eerie, but so beautiful

[mikelarry]

Looking at this video now makes me wish I could have seen it when I was doing physics in highschool... just the way the equations relate to the actual real world applications is just so fascinating

[epiceducation]

Great job on the video you didn't only show the pros of the nuclear propulsion engines but also the cons which gave me a very good perspective on the situation.