Solid-State Thermionic Power for Human Exploration and Commercial Generation, Year 2

This project targets one the most critical barriers to human deep space exploration - the means to efficiently power and rapidly propel human missions to Mars and beyond. The project will explore the implementation of a high efficiency Solid-State Thermionic-based nuclear fission power systems to serve Electric Propulsion systems such as Q-thrusters, VASIMR, Hall, or other approaches. A Solid-State approach centered around advanced Thermionic power converters would combine the high efficiency of traditional dynamic power conversion (Rankine, Brayton, Stirling) with the simplicity of a static converter with no moving parts. The resulting system could enable Human Mars missions of < 1 year round trip by affording a system of megawatt power, low specific mass (<10 kg/kWe), greatly reduced plant complexity, and associated savings in development cost.#Advanced Nuclear-Thermionic power systems driving Electric Propulsion (Q-thruster, VASIMR, Hall, Ion, MPD, etc.) may offer the breakthrough necessary for human Mars missions of < 1 year round trip, resulting in significant improvement to crew health and safety, large reductions in consumables mass, mass of spares and redundancy, and reduced "window" for catastrophic hardware failure or solar flare events.#High conversion efficiency (20%), static operation with no moving parts and the potential for high reliability, greatly reduced plant complexity, and the potential for reduced development costs.