NUCLEAR ROCKET OPTIMIZATION -- A significant amount of time can be spent
trying to accurately estimate nuclear rocket engine weight in order to
arrive at the minimum weight engine based on the desired engine
performance. This process not only requires the engineer to be
knowledgeable about the major dimensions of nuclear rocket engines, but
also demands familiarity with engine weight characteristics. NOP, from
NASA Lewis Research Center, is a versatile digital computer program
developed for the parametric analysis of beryllium-reflected,
graphite-moderated rocket engines. The program facilitates the analysis of
engine performances such as specific impulse, engine power, engine cycle
type, and engine design constraints arising from complications of fuel
loading and internal temperature gradients.

The program is capable of analyzing the effect of specific impulse, engine
power or thrust, nozzle expansion ratio, nozzle chamber pressure, core
pressure drop, and coolant channel diameter on the engine weight of a
nuclear rocket engine. In addition, NOP analyzes engines employing either
a hot bleed cycle, a full topping cycle, or a partial topping cycle. In
addition to predicting the minimum weight analysis, NOP produces a variety
of preliminary engine designs which readily indicate the weight penalty
associated with non-minimum weight engine designs.

NOP, LEW-15474, is written in standard FORTRAN 77 to be machine
independent. It has been successfully implemented on a Sun running SunOS,
an IBM PC running MS-DOS, and a DEC VAX running VMS. It required 95K of
RAM under SunoS 4.1.1, 163K of RAM under MS-DOS 5.0, and 368K of RAM under
VMS 5-4.3. A sample MS-DOS executable is provided on the distribution
medium. The standard distribution medium for NOP is a set of two 5.25 inch
360K MS-DOS format diskettes. It is also available on a 3.5 inch diskette
in UNIX tar format. Program $750; documentation $82.

COSMIC, The University of Georgia
382 East Broad St, Athens, GA 30602-4272
706-542-3265  fax: 706-542-4807

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