How Nuclear Rockets Will Get Us to Mars | DARPA DRACO #shorts

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Chemical rockets will never get us to deep [music] space. They are simply too slow.

[00:00:04]To survive the lethal radiation on a Mars transit, we have to stop burning fuel and start splitting atoms. DARPA's DRACO [music] mission abandons combustion, routing liquid hydrogen directly through a high-assay nuclear fission core. Superheating the universe's lightest element forces the engine [music] to expel mass at twice the velocity of a standard rocket plume.

[00:00:24]This massive leap in [music] specific impulse shaves months off the voyage, cutting the crew's radiation window down in half. To eliminate [music] launch risks, the reactor remains completely inert and cold until the vehicle safely [music] clears Earth's atmosphere. Only when a stable high orbit is locked in does the core activate, unleashing [music] a sustained atomic torrent.

[00:00:44]We aren't just building bigger fuel tanks anymore. We are finally unlocking the physics needed to leave this rock behind.

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