Noodling on Nuclear Engines
One day in 1982, Joseph “Rod” Canion and two colleagues from Texas Instruments sat down at the House of Pies in Houston and used a napkin to sketch out what would become Compaq’s portable PC. In 1996, Felix Zandman, founder of Vishay Intertechnology, dined at Husker Steak House in Columbus, Neb., grabbed a napkin and drafted a design for a power metal strip resistor, which became crucial to…
A napkin became the canvas for an unconventional idea in 2021. Kurt Polzin, the chief engineer of NASA's space nuclear propulsion project, met Robert Schleicher from General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems at a conference. They began sketching out designs for a nuclear rocket on the napkin. This novel concept, still in the early stages of planning, could potentially halve the time it takes to reach Mars, addressing one of the biggest challenges in interplanetary travel - the long journey through hostile space filled with radiation.
The authors of the idea, Polzin and Schleicher, are now inviting feedback and refinements on their design, emphasizing that the future of space exploration could very well be written on napkins.
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