Anthony Zuppero

{{short description|American nuclear scientist}}

Anthony Zuppero is an American nuclear scientist who is noted for his work in nuclear thermal rockets using water as the propellant.[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/15/zuppero_solar_system/ TheRegister: The best mad scientist memoir of the year, Zuppero's zingy tale of space travel and bonkers weaponry]

Early in his career he worked on nuclear weaponry, including one proposal to try to move a 1 gigatonne nuclear bomb to Russia in under two minutes, which he was able to show was impractical.[http://www.neofuel.com/inhabit/inhabit.pdf Autobiography: To Inhabit The Solar System] "Just before he left the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Department of Energy, where he worked from 1991 through 1998, he was the (de facto) Principal Investigator, Nuclear Space Transport Systems."{{cite web |url=http://www.neofuel.com/ |title=Home |website=neofuel.com}}

Zuppero has proposed nuclear and solar powered steam-propelled spacecraft. He has proposed such vehicles as a means to carry ice and water around the Solar System, rather than take the more energy- and equipment-intensive route of extracting the hydrogen and oxygen. His calculations suggest that this needs two orders of magnitude less equipment, and generates propellant at a far faster rate. Working with Geoffrey Landis, he proposed mining water from the Martian moons Deimos and Phobos,Anthony Zuppero and Geoffrey A. Landis, "Mass budget for mining the moons of Mars," Resources of Near-Earth Space, University of Arizona, 1991 (abstract [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=49095&id=2&as=false&or=false&qs=Ntt%3Dzuppero%26Ntk%3Dall%26Ntx%3Dmode%2Bmatchall%26Ns%3DArchiveName%257c1%26N%3D4294808501 here] or [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991rnes.nasa...24Z here]) showing that there was an optimum specific impulse for doing so,"Optimum rocket propulsion for energy-limited transfer," Resources of Near-Earth Space, University of Arizona, 1991 ([https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=49095&id=2&as=false&or=false&qs=Ns%3DArchiveName%257c1%26N%3D4294785772 abstract]) and later proposed similar techniques to utilize water from Near Earth Asteroids, and from the Moon."Anthony C. Zuppero, Bruce G. Schnitzler, and Thomas K. Larson, "[http://www.neofuel.com/moonicerocket/ Nuclear Heated Steam Rocket Using Lunar Ice], paper AIAA 97-3172, 33rd AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, July 6–9, 1997, Seattle, WA