Heatpipe power system development

This is the final report of a one-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The objective of the project was to develop a design approach that could enable the development of near-term, low-cost, space fission-power systems. Sixteen desired attributes were identified for such systems and detailed analyses were performed to verify that they are feasible. Preliminary design work was performed on one concept, the Heatpipe Power system (HPS). As a direct result of this project, funding was obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to build and test an HPS module. The module tests went well, and they now have funding to build a bimodal module