Ronald J. Lipinski

Design and performance of Sandia's contactless coilgun for 50 mm projectiles

A multistage, contactless coilgun is being designed to demonstrate the applicability of this technology to accelerate nominal 50-mm-diameter projectiles to velocities of 3 km/s. Forty stages of this design (Phase 1 coilgun) will provide a testbed for coil designs and system components while accelerating 200 to 400 g projectiles to 1 km/s. The Phase 1 gun was successfully qualified by operating 40 stages at half energy (10-kJ stored/stage) accelerating 340 g, room-temperature, aluminum-armature projectiles to 406 m/s. The design and performance of the Phase 1 coilgun, coil development, projectile design, capacitor banks, firing system, and integration are discussed. >

Operational Results of a Closed Brayton Cycle Test‐Loop

A number of space and terrestrial power system designs plan to use nuclear reactors that are coupled to Closed‐loop Brayton Cycle (CBC) systems to generate electrical power. Because very little experience exists regarding the operational behavior of these systems, Sandia National Laboratories (through its Laboratory Directed Research and Development program) is developing a closed‐loop test bed that can be used to determine the operational behavior of these systems and to validate models for these systems. Sandia has contracted Barber‐Nichols Corporation to design, fabricate, and assemble a Closed‐loop Brayton Cycle (CBC) system. This system was developed by modifying commercially available hardware. It uses a 30 kWe Capstone C‐30 gas‐turbine unit (www.capstoneturbine.com) with a modified housing that permits the attachment of an electrical heater and a water cooled chiller that are connected to the turbo‐machinery in a closed loop. The test‐loop reuses the Capstone turbine, compressor, and alternator. Th...

Small fission power systems for Mars

A Mars surface power system configuration with an output power of 3 kWe and a system mass of 775 kg is described. It consists of a heatpipe-cooled reactor with UN fuel coupled to a Stirling engine with a fixed conical radiator driven by loop heat pipes. Key to achieving this low mass is the use of a highly radiation-resistant multiplexer for monitoring and controlling the reactor, as well as radiation resistant generators and motors. Also key is the judicious placement of shields to prevent radiation scattered from the Martian surface and air from damaging the reactor controls. Several alternate configurations also are briefly looked at, including a moderated reactor with UZrH fuel and a reactor using 233U instead of 235U. The moderated reactor system has essentially the same mass as the baseline unmoderated UN system and yields the same radiation shielding requirements. The 233U reactor is significantly smaller and yields a system mass about 228 kg lighter than with 235U, but part of this weight reductio...

Space applications for contactless coilguns

Two space applications are considered for (electrically) contactless coilguns: launch of small satellites into low-Earth orbit, and launch of lunar liquid oxygen (LLOX) from the Moon to the stationary Lagrangian point L2. For the Earth-to-orbit application, the baseline conceptual design consists of a 960-m-long gun sited in a tunnel at 25 degrees inclination. The gun launches an 1820-kg package that includes a 100-kg satellite and a 650-kg boost rocket for orbital insertion. For the lunar application, the launcher is 200 m long. A 100-kg load of LLOX is packaged in a 10-kg fiber-wrapped tank, accelerated at 2 kgees in an aluminum bucket (armature), and launched at 2.33 km/s at 30-min intervals. The canisters arrive at L2 2.97 days later and are captured by robotic tugs that deliver them to a fuel depot. The total mass of LLOX delivered per year is 867 Mg (metric tons). >

Design of a heatpipe-cooled Mars-surface fission reactor

The next generation of robotic missions to Mars will most likely require robust power sources in the range of 3 to 20 kWe. Fission systems are well suited to provide safe, reliable, and economic power within this range. The goal of this study is to design a compact, low-mass fission system that meets Mars-surface power requirements, while maintaining a high level of safety and reliability at a relatively low cost. The Heatpipe Power System (HPS) is one possible approach for producing near-term, low-cost, space fission power. The goal of the HPS project is to devise an attractive space fission system that can be developed quickly and affordably. The primary ways of doing this are by using existing technology and by designing the system for inexpensive testing. If the system can be designed to allow highly prototypic testing with electrical heating, then an exhaustive test program can be carried out quickly and inexpensively, and thorough testing of the actual flight unit can be performed—which is a major b...

Planetary surface reactor shielding using indigenous materials

The exploration and development of Mars will require abundant surface power. Nuclear reactors are a low-cost, low-mass means of providing that power. A significant fraction of the nuclear power system mass is radiation shielding necessary for protecting humans and/or equipment from radiation emitted by the reactor. For planetary surface missions, it may be desirable to provide some or all of the required shielding from indigenous materials. This paper examines shielding options that utilize either purely indigenous materials or a combination of indigenous and nonindigenous materials.

Coated particle fuel for radioisotope power systems (RPSs) and radioisotope heater units (RHUs)

Coated particle fuel offers great promise for advanced radioisotope power systems (RPSs) and radioisotope heater units (RHUs) being pursued for future U.S. solar system exploration missions. Potential benefits of this fuel include improved design flexibility and materials compatibility, enhanced safety and performance, and reduced specific mass and volume. This paper describes and discusses coated particle fuel, with emphasis on its applicability, attributes, and potential benefits to future RPSs and RHUs. Additionally, this paper identifies further analyses and verification testing that should be conducted before a commitment is made to fully develop this fuel. Efforts to date indicate there is every reason to believe that the potential benefits of coated particle fuel to future RPSs and RHUs can be demonstrated with a modest, phased analytical and verification test effort. Thus, developmental risk appears minimal, while the potential benefits are substantial. If coated particle fuel is pursued and ultim...

Design Concept for a Nuclear Reactor‐Powered Mars Rover

A study was recently carried out by a team from JPL and the DOE to investigate the utility of a DOE‐developed 3 kWe surface fission power system for Mars missions. The team was originally tasked to perform a study to evaluate the usefulness and feasibility of incorporation of such a power system into a landed mission. In the course of the study it became clear that the application of such a power system was enabling to a wide variety of potential missions. Of these, two missions were developed, one for a stationary lander and one for a reactor‐powered rover. This paper discusses the design of the rover mission, which was developed around the concept of incorporating the fission power system directly into a large rover chassis to provide high power, long range traverse capability. The rover design is based on a minimum extrapolation of technology, and adapts existing concepts developed at JPL for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, lander and EDL systems. The small size of the reactor allowed its...

DOE reactor-pumped laser program

FALCON is a high-power, steady-state, nuclear reactor-pumped laser (RPL) concept that is being developed by the Department of Energy. The FALCON program has experimentally demonstrated reactor-pumped lasing in various mixtures of xenon, argon, neon, and helium at wavelengths of 585, 703, 725, 1271, 1733, 1792, 2032, 2630, 2650, and 3370 nm with intrinsic efficiency as high as 2.5%. The major strengths of a reactor-pumped laser are continuous high-power operation, modular construction, self-contained power, compact size, and a variety of wavelengths (from visible to infrared). These characteristics suggest numerous applications not easily accessible to other laser types. A ground-based RPL could beam its power to space for such activities as illuminating geosynchronous communication satellites in the earths shadow to extend their lives, beaming power to orbital transfer vehicles, removing space debris, and providing power (from earth) to a lunar base during the long lunar night. The compact size and self-contained power also makes an RPL very suitable for ship basing so that power-beaming activities could be situated around the globe. The continuous high power of an RPL opens many potential manufacturing applications such as deep-penetration welding and cutting of thick structures, wide-area hardening of metal surfaces by heat treatment or cladding application, wide-area vapor deposition of ceramics onto metal surfaces, production of sub-micron sized particles for manufacturing of ceramics, wide-area deposition of diamond- like coatings, and 3-D ceramic lithography.

Small fission power systems for NEP

Two nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) power system configurations are presented, each with an output power of 50 kWe and a system mass of about 2500 kg. Both consist of a reactor coupled to a recuperated Brayton power conversion system with a fixed conical radiator driven by loop heat pipes. In one system the reactor is gas-cooled with the gas directly driving the Brayton power conversion system. In the other the reactor is heatpipe-cooled with a heat exchanger between the reactor and the Brayton system. Two variations are described briefly with powers of 100 k We and 150 kWe. The mass scales approximately with the square root of the power.