For my Master's thesis, I wanted to come up with some way to improve on previous attempts on nuclear thermal rockets. I did a lot of research, and read through Priniciples of Nuclear Rocket Propulsion by William J. Emrich Jr., and while there were a lot of interesting topics, I decided to focus on improving heat transfer within the nuclear fuel elements of the engine, where the propellant is heated to its operating temperature, and then expelled through the exit nozzle of the rocket to produce thrust. I included some background below: