Space Reactor Technology Development

Abstract

The idea of using atomic energy in space originated in 1906 and was first mentioned in a paper written by Robert Goddard when he was a college sophomore. The idea gained momentum after President Dwight Eisenhower gave his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, and it quickly moved from the realm of imagination to reality in 1954 when scientists at the US Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Mound Laboratory demonstrated that electricity could be generated from heat produced by the decay of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in the first radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).