Slashdot Mirror
Lockheed Martin to Build Nuclear Powered Spacecraft
LouisvilleDebugger writes "The BBC reports that Lockheed Martin have received a $6M contract to develop the nuclear powered
JIMO, or Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. (According to the NASA project site, the first probes would not launch before 2011 due to development lead time.) On arrival at Jupiter, the extra power allows the probe to orbit each of three of the Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, and most challenging from a radiation exposure standpoint, Europa) in turn, presumably helping to establish the possibility of liquid water and hence, life within the Jovian system. JIMO is a sub-project of Project Prometheus, initiated by NASA this year for the purpose of demonstrating that nuclear powered and propelled spacecraft may be safely designed and tested."
"JIMO is a sub-project of Project Prometheus, initiated by NASA this year for the purpose of demonstrating that nuclear powered and propelled spacecraft may be safely designed and tested."
Do they really think that it can be completely safe? What if it crashes onto earth just after launch? Or it blows up in the air, so radioactive particles get spread all around?
Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
That's a pretty strong statement. Is the current thinking these days that we find liquid water, then life *must* also be present?
Should that have said 6 Million? You can't build anything these days for 6 million. Hell, payroll alone will be 6 million.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
maybe this thing would have a chance of getting off the ground. Unfortunately the enviroloonies, are so terrified of the word 'nuclear' that any project that has it attached will get protested into the ground...
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Project Orion was the real origin of the concept of using nuclear power in space... and while the political environment changed and didn't allow it to come to being, any of you who've never heard of it and are interested in spaceflight ought to check it out. (The link is just the first link I found on Google, there's actually a great book about it here.
If the craft will be nuclear powered and will be able to go to three moons in turn, is there any possibility that a slightly modified design would be able to return to earth and be reused for later ventures? It seems this should be the next logical step, since reusing a probe on more missions means that we'd spend less on actually building the crafts and more on studying the findings and other useful space ventures.
Its nice to see Lockheed Martin has other businesses than building weapons of massdestruction for the US government.
...nuclear-powered space ships should have started launching 10 years ago. So, if Roddenberry's predications continue to be off by 10 years, we should have the eugenics wars soon.
Khan!!!!!!
Why do I h8 apple?
Oh oh, aren't we suppost to leave Europa alone after 2010? The Monolith is going to be pissed!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I didn't know that solar power was too weak beyond the mars orbit to power anything; I would have thought it stronger than that.
Our thick atmosphere filters out so much radiation... I would have thought the vacuum of deep space would have allowed solar power to be more effective at a much greater distance than that.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
On arrival at Jupiter, the extra power allows the probe to orbit each of three of the Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, and most challenging from a radiation exposure standpoint, Europa) in turn, presumably helping to establish the possibility of liquid water and hence, life within the Jovian system.
The probe will then dump its nuclear waste onto these moons, thereby killing that life.
Hopefully they're not propelling this with nuclear blasts. Previous attempts at this didn't work out too well.
:)
Yes, this is a joke. Dont take me seriously
OLPC Australia
I thought it was already established that water is not necessary for life.
Thomas Gold's Deep Hot Biosphere and his Book.Soon we'll have radioactive foam falling on our heads.
It is probably too soon after Columbia for them to start talking publicly about this kind of project---confidence in NASA isn't exactly at a high now. Nuclear power has already been used for satellites, and there have been some scary moments when these satellites have come back down. This probe, at least, would not be designed to come back to the Earth. But while IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), it seems like launch vehicles still have a dismaying tendency to blow up with some regularity, and if NASA scatters radioactive isotopes all over the place then that could set space exploration back decades. Oh, and kill a lot of stuff.
This post is dedicated to all of those
"So what's the worst that can happen? You screw up, and we all die."
Eh, had to be there I suppose...
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Radiation intensity falls off as a function of a square of the distance... Get twice as far away, receive 1/4 the energy.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Ok, so what about Io? I know it's not as interesting as Europa from a "there might be life there" point of view, but the same goes for Calisto and Ganymedes. Is it just so hard to gather the power to orbit all four Galilean moons that they're not even gonna try?
...a small, strangely coffee-grinder-like device labeled "Mr. Fusion."
The coolest voice ever.
In another perspective, If I were head of the space armies of an alien race and there were nuclear devices headed toward my planet, I would probably counter attack. I mean, what if this device loses control and hits one of the moons dead on. Then again, thats why I'm probably not head of military :D
This design worked quite nicely during my youth.
Dance of the Sugar Plum Goatse... ha ha. a decent song too. nice.
What if the launch goes wrong quite late and the nuclear reactor hits, for example, North-Korea.. That would be quite stressing for diplomats, no?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The shape of this spacecraft reminds me a bit of another Jupiter mission.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This could be risky, launching a nuclear powered vehicle into space considering how much trouble there is during the lift off stage. I know its been done before but the more its done the more likely something will happen. There will be a lot of protests from environmentlists and it could be hard to get permision to actually launch the vehicle.
Couldn't they look more into the use of solar sails rather than possibly polluting space?
The name is obviously a subtle Tribute to Jim Oberg, *the* space geek.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Yeah, i do that too.
It looks like nobody has said this yet, so I'll pitch in -- the Cassini space probe, which was launched on October 15, 1997, was also nuclear-powered. There were protests around NASA right before the launch took place, but it went up anyway without a hitch.
According to JPL's Cassini "safety" page, they explain that the probe is powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) which provide energy by the natural radioactive decay of Pu-238. This isn't fission or fusion at work, but merely the harvesting of heat generated by the radioactive decay. The big question for environmentalists (and NASA) was whether these RTGs would remain contained in the event of a launch disaster.
The big difference between the RTGs of Cassini and the nuclear technology in JIMO is that JPL wants to have a full-fledged nuclear fission reactor this time around. This would obviously provide a lot more power for the mission, at the expense of extreme public scrutiny. It will be interesting to see how this situation pans out.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Not only is the space program a waste of money
I suppose telecommunications sattelites are a waste of money too?
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
Lots of spacecraft have been nuclear powered. This one will use nuclear energy to create propulsion. That's the new part.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Everybody know the real inventor of nuclear powered spacecraft is Professor Calculus!t intin/en/av entures/albums/objec.html/ jeunesse/momes/tintin/en/av entures/albums/march.html
http://www.francetv.fr/jeunesse/momes/
http://www.francetv.fr
Voyager 1 and 2, and pretty much every other spacecraft thats every gone out beyond Mars' orbit has been powered by RTGs.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
..on the JIMO site, I have one question:
Where the f*ck is HAL?!? We've go just about everything for the trip, and yet NO HAL!! His birthday came and went... Or is it the engineers said "Hey, we need an uber-intelligent AI to pilot this thing".. and everyone just started saying "Open the pod bay doors, Hal"
meh
In my opinion, we are just in for another disaster. I think that genetic food companies should spend some more time on curing all the genetic defects they've caused.
Or is it using canned gas (or whatever) to do directional changes, etc. and the nuke power is to run the sensors/recorders/beowulf cluster?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Same for Groton CT home of Electric Boat, and hell the Mohegan Sun Casino in Montville CT is a reburbished factory (the oldest parts not the new hotel). It used to be United Nuclear where they built frickin' reactors.
>
Just a thought... is it likely that the fields of Jupiter would prove suitable for using space tethers as a source of power?
We'll probably still need nuclear to get there in the first place, of course..
Oops, wrong story!
There's no way the BBC is going to be Slashdotted. And the parent is a TROLL. Mod it to -1 where it belongs.
Space exploration via chemical propellants will never be economically viable in the large scale. We simply *must* research and develop much more powerful propulsion systems if we are ever to get off this planet in a big way. And yes, it is dangerous. There will be accidents, and loss of life. As long as this is not the result of negligance or outright stupidity, it is a necessary price we must pay as a species for this knowledge. Prometheus was a superb choice name for this project. Man is literally learning how to tame sunfire. There were countless accidents, mistakes and deaths before we learned how to make large scale passenger transportation by air practical. When the first first commercial jetliner (Dehaviland comet) with pressurized cabins was developed, they found out that the cyclic stresses from the pressure changes caused metal fatigue on the thin outer skin, causing the windows to eventually pop out in flight. Oops... But eventually we got it more or less right.
The same is true with spacecraft. Rocket science IS hard. It will take a lot of trial and error effort before we really learn how to do it right. We are still barely past the equivalent of the Wright brothers era of space exploration.
My rights don't need management.
THE LIABILITY TREATY
The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, the Liability Treaty, sets the minimum standards for establishing the liability for space faring nations for launch or spaceflight activities which could cause health, property, or environmental damage outside the launching state's borders.
The treaty, written in 1972, assigns the liability for a spacecraft causing damage to the Earth or to an airplane to the launching state regardless of fault. Damaged property must be restored to prior condition in accordance with international law and the principles of justice and equity. If a spacecraft collides with another spacecraft in space the liability is assigned based on the determination of negligence or malicious intent and the damages awarded as determined by international law.
If the launching state wishes to contest the damage award with the damaged state, the Liability Treaty states that both nations should go first through diplomatic channels and, if no satisfaction or resolution is achieved, a claims commission can be established. No case has ever gotten to this point. In fact, there has only been one case handled under the Liability Treaty: Cosmos 954.
Cosmos 954 was a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite (RORSAT) which was powered by a nuclear reactor. Previous Soviet missions using such technology would split the reactor from the parent body of the spacecraft and boost the radioactive material into a higher orbit where the reactor would remain for more than 600 years which was well beyond the life of the radioactive material. Cosmos 954 had a special problem; it went out of control and the technicians were unable to separate the reactor from the spacecraft's parent body.
In late January 1978, Cosmos 954 came crashing into the Great Slave Lake area of Canada spewing debris along a 500 mile footprint. As luck would have it the radioactive portion of the craft fell near a trapper's camp. The trapper looked at the unusual phenomenon and then left it alone. The Canadian Air Force later found the piece and the trapper and took both back to Yellowknife, N.T. where the trapper was found to be in good health and the reactor pieces were impounded. After the cleanup, the Canadian Government sent a $15 million bill to the Soviets. The Soviets paid less than half of this amount and agreed not to take back the spacecraft. The Canadians were happy with the amount they received and were happier still that the Soviets had acknowledged the spacecraft's existence. The Soviets had abided by the Liability Treaty.
For those who wonder why Jupiters moons are interesting, and worth visiting, I'll try to give a brief summary here. JIMO will be visiting Jupiters four Galilean moons, named after their initial discovery by Galileo Galilei (through his now-famous telescope). In order of distance from Jupiter, they are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
Io is the only moon in the solar system to show volcanic activity; plumes of gas ejected from its volcanos, rising up to 250km above the surface, have been detected from Earth. The energy to keep the interior of Io molten comes from the tidal friction generated as the moon moves through Jupiter's strong gravitation field. Io is a great laboratory for understanding volcanic activity in general.
Europa, the next moon out, is one of the most likely places for life to exist in the Solar System (excepting, of course, Earth). Images of the moon reveal a very smooth surface (in fact, the smoothest in the Solar System), criss-crossed by long, narrow, straight features. These features appear to be fissures in the surface; combined with the fact that the surface is almost pure ice (which we know from spectroscopy studies), it appears that Europa may have a large sub-surface ocean of liquid water, covered by a crust of ice.
Support for the existence of this ocean comes from the discovery of ice rafts on the surface, much like found in polar regions on Earth, and from the detection of a weak magnetic field by the Galileo spacecraft. Europa is too small to have its own magnetic field, but if it contains a large quantity of conducting fluid (such as water with a high concentration of dissolved minerals), then its motion through Jupiters magnetic field will generate a field of its own.
The significance of the sub-surface water on Europa is that liquid water is one of the principal prerequesites for life (as we know it). Speculation as to whether life does indeed exist on Europa is ongoing; to find out, a cryobot/hydrobot mission to the moon is required. The cryobot would melt its way through the icy crust, and the hydrobot would descend through this hole and explore the oceans underneath. Interest incryobot/hydrobot technology was spurred on by the discovery of Lake Vostok in Antarctica, the world's fourth-largest freshwater lake, which is trapped under 2km of ice sheet, and may contain prehistoric lifeforms.
Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, larger even than the planet Mercury. Both Ganymede and Callisto have heavily-cratered surfaces, indicative of millenia of meteorite bombardment. Both are a mixture of rock and ice, although the detection of a weak magnetic field around Callisto indicates that it may have a sub-surface ocean, like Europa. The existence of this ocean is puzzling, since Callisto is too far from Jupiter for tidal heating to be able to melt ice. Some have suggested that Calliso's ocean contains an antifreeze (maybe ammonia), which keeps the water liquid well below its normal solidification temperature.
IMHO, I think Europa is the jewel in the crown of the Galilean moons, due to the possibility that life may exist there. Unfortunately, as one can tell from JIMO's full name (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter), there are no plans to land on this fascinating world. In "2010: Odyssey Two", Arthur C. Clarke writes about a manned landing on Europa which discovers life; it would be great for me to see this happen in my lifetime, let alone by 2010.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
If Jupiter's turned into a star by then, we'll have plenty of other challenges from a radiation exposure standpoint before Europa.
The coolest voice ever.
all of our oceans. Aircraft carriers, submarines, etc. have all been docked at every major port in the US for the last 30-odd years. Each has its own reactor on board.
If they have the technology to park these things in San Diego harbor, my guess is that they can probably manage to get it out of our atmosphere without a major catastrophe.
Oh, and for all those who believe that we should be designing a manned mission to Mars, let me be perfectly clear:
The only way we will get humans to Mars will be using nuclear propulsion and nuclear power sources(RTGs). Period.
And for those who question the safety of launching RTGs... this link describes the cases where this has already happened. RTGs have survived abort detonations of REAL missions right after launch with no radiation leakage. They have also survived re-entry (Apollo 13) with no leakage. The safety technology is mature and works.
This is our only ticket for orbitter missions to the outer planets.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Greenpeace reports that between 1950 and 1993 there have been 380 nuclear weapons accidents, some involving the accidental "dirty bomb" incidents, such as the dispersion of nuclear materials over Palomares in southern Spain.
Now according to the the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository who studied the Palomares incident as well as many other cases, a 78 year old person with elevated Pu in their bones will only have a 0.14285 probability of dying this year, whereas a normal american 78 year old will have an average probaility of dying this year of 0.12780.
We're already dropping nuclear material all over ourselves, and for the most part, you aren't going to hear about it until it's declassified.
Furthermore, have you been to Hiroshima and stood under the peace dome? Have you seen the children playing in the schools at Nagasaki?
The oppertunites for using peaceful nuclear power to explore space far outweigh the risks. Those accidents haven't degraded my environmental quality. I'm sure that a deliberate attack on myself would, but even that will heal with time.
We are talking about the power to reach out and travel the cosmos.
the chinese ming Emperor Zhu Di built a massive navy which traded extensively in the pacific, reached africa and almost discovered america.
When Emperor Zhu died, his sucessor was advised to lessen the tax burden of the navy, and burned all the ships. Result? Other more outward looking seafaring nations whipped them.
If we don't have deep space capability, then we are dead meat when we come across those who do. Especially if they are ex-earth colonists who decide to return. No chance of benevolance through alien genetics there.
I remember something about having a mining operation there or something? And Sean Connery was the sherrif there?
It was a while back and it's pretty hazy to me now...
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I think you should go to MIT, finish your degree and become a research associate at the testing facility. While you're at it I think you also should speak to Dr. Alex Kleiner or Dr Eli Vance. Failing that contact Dr Walter Bennett.
Surprisingly, the answer may be very simple. Because of American militarism. If only they haven't dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, if only they haven't embraced the nuclear race, there might not be a testing ban. In that case we might have already had bases on Mars, first interstellar missions (in progress), etc.
We can only hope that civilians will get advanced new technologies before US military uses them. Imagine what would happen if US Army will unleash AI-powered nanobots on some terrorist state. Everyone is terrified, testing and development of these technologies is banned. The bright future of humanity is not so bright anymore...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
RTGs have been launched many times before into space and have even re-entered the atmosphere of Earth.
http://nuclear.gov/space/space-desc.html
3 American RTGs have done uncontrolled re-entries. The first one from Transit 5BN. This occurred in 1964, prior to the adoption of the full fuel containment design philosophy. The design philosophy at that time was to allow RTGs to burn up in the atmosphere in the event of reentry. his reentry released 17,000 curies of radioactive material into the atmosphere at 75 miles above the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean
http://www.nuclearspace.com/use_in_space.htm
"NASA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy are currently working together to develop the technology base for Space Nuclear Reactor Power (SP-100) . This program will develop and demonstrate in ground tests the technology required for space reactor power systems from tens of kilowatts to hundreds of kilowatts. This program will assure sufficient power, at substantially reduced weight, for selected future Earth orbiting spacecraft, a lunar outpost, or piloted Mars missions.
The SP-100 reactor power system is designed to be launched radioactively cold. After mission completion, the reactor will be shut down and stored in space for hundreds of years to ensure fission products decay to safe levels. In the event of accidental reentry, the reactor system will enter intact and remain subcritical so that fission products will no longer be generated or released."
http://www.nuclearspace.com/facts_about_rtg.htm
Don't you think the money is a little short for developing a nuclear spacecraft?
I would have thought it is more like 6B.
There's more information on space-based reactors to b e used in the Jupiter mission at:
s .h tm
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheu
The reactor uses slightly enriched uranium, not plutonium, and is launched 'cold'. The uranium 'fuel' is much less toxic than plutonium. This type of fuel cannot be used to construct a fission bomb, as it contains far too low a concentration of U-235 to produce a nuclear explosion.
The reactor is launched 'cold', in a shut down state. That means that during launch, there will be no fission reaction products present. The reaction products are the biggest hazard with nuclear fuel, being both radioactive and chemically reactive, prone to dispersing throughout an environment if released. (Radioactive iodine and cesium isotopes being probably the best known examples.) The reactor is not started up until the spacecraft is on an interplanetary trajectory.
This is not a new technology. The SNAP-10A space reactor power system was launched in 1965. Methods for protecting and encapsulating the fuel elements to prevent dispersal or leakage are well known and tested. (These methods will survive explosions during the launch, as well as uncontrolled re-entry from orbit.)
nullus textus
This temporal cold war bullshit from enterprise is why none of that has happened yet. Blame that for our current lack of flying cars.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Hmm... You know, I never thought to ask, but is there any radioactive mineral deposits on mars? I couldn't find any on google. (search terms "mars radiation" and got a map on how much radiation a human would take rather than how much Uranium has been found by rovers in the ground.) If not, and we decide to go the fast way to avoid space-sickness (and all its bone weakening effects), earth would be the sole supplier of fuel to mars for return voyages.
That makes it pretty tough if you want to start a colony.
... but but this would be more of a biological mission. It's not a question of power, remember the probe's sensors would be radiation hardened, not radiation proof. Every second these sensors work in the high radiation Jovian environment is one less second left in their life span. Even a one week orbit of Io is one week less (plus wasted transit time and fuel) spent studying Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, which are far more interesting from the (exo)biologist's viewpoint.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
No. The mission profiles for nuclear powered spacecraft prohibit the use of a return trajectory or orbit that may bring the spacecraft back to Earth.
After mission completion, a nuclear powered spacecraft must be placed in a 'safekeeping' orbit, to reduce potential risks to Earth or other planetary bodies.
I remember reading something in one of Sagan's books saying that nuclear propulsion was a no-go due to a treaty that had been signed (the name of the treaty escapes me at the moment) with other nations which prohibitted the detonation of the nuclear materials in space. Anyone know anything about this?
The spacecraft won't be doing any dumping. On mission completion, nuclear powered spacecraft are required to be placed in a 'safekeeping' orbit, so as to pose no risk to Earth or other planetary bodies.
You could just pack a flag in there that says bang, and point it at somebody and it would have the desired effect.
Considering both spacecraft were nuclear powered, the similarity is not too surprising. There's a nuclear power plant and some form of nuclear electric propulsion system at one end, a long boom, with heat radiators (the heat 'sink' for the power plant), and a bunch of stuff that we don't want close to a running reactor at the other end.
We have discovered life on europa!
Unfortunately, our radiation killed it
-_-
Solar sails need light, as in sunlight. The farther one moves from the sun, the less light there is available. It's that pesky inverse square law. Double the distance, and you get only 1/4 the propulsion.
Then, once you get in the neighborhood of Jupiter, you get to maneuver among the moons, in a neighborhood with radiation and relatively dense magnetic fields. That makes a typical metallized film sail tricky to use.
A solar sail, while a romantic sci-fi notion, is impractical for this sort of mission.
Why does that sound like scientist porn?
"Oh! How I do enjoy a good Rammstein."
if the propulsion will be "contained" (clean) or "open" (dirty). The fusion may take place in partially open reactor, so superheated particles of the radioactive fuel are ejected at high speed, giving really fast propulsion and leaving a wide radioactive trail in space, or the reactor may be "contained" (like normal reactors) and produce electricity or other forms of "clean" power for some other propulsion system, like a ion drive, that's quite harmless. Which one will it be?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Imagine if they sent GPS equipped soldiers to topple a government. Then everyone would hate and fear GPS. Damn.
The INEEL museum in the middle of Idaho has a public display of an engine for a nuclear powered airplane. The idea was that the plane would drag the engine behind it on a long cable; so the pilots wouldn't die of radiation sickness. The plane would never land.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet. Considering that $6M is chump change for anything NASA does and also considering that the
NERVA nuclear rocket project was started over 40 years ago I wonder how much actual invention is going to happen here or if somebody us just going to pick up the remaining pieces of NERVA.
You could build 50 of them for the cost of only one F-15!
Six million. Yeah. I'm excited.
...is that the radiactivity and hence dose rate from a nuclear reactor is pretty negligible until it has gone critical (i.e. started) for the first time. I'm assuming this thing would be launched into earth orbit using conventional rockets (i.e. chemicals), or built in orbit, and the nuclear engine would not be started until it was at a safe distance from earth (or until escape velovity had been achieved). I imagine that at that sort of distance the gamma rays from the engine would be barely detectable from the earth's surface, if at all. Compared to what you recieve naturally from the Sun, space and the earth, that truly is a negligible amount. I was a nuclear engineer.
Stick Men
See, I always thought that the reason the army never deployed a nuclear airborne base, like a giant helicopter, is that a viable nuclear reactor would be too large. But now that Lokheed.Marti is going to develop a spaceship with a rather small and yet functional nuclear reactor, I start to wonder: is the time of flying mother-ships, carrier helicopters or even true flying gunship monsters, coming?
Well, if anyone is ever going to build such a weapon, it's going to be the US. Hate it or like it (or love it), it's still the only country that can undertake giant projects.
Sigged!
With launch date of 2011, this will be one year after we are ordered to stay away from Europa.
The First Rule of Jupiter Club, is STAY AWAY FROM EUROPA!
I think it is hight time that we discovered Naquadria and developed a stable chain-reaction whereas we could conduct space travel. The power produced should create rip in sub-space to permit sub-space travel in the X-303.
As mentioned earlier, there seems to be some confusion about what sort of nuclear power we are talking about.
There are three types of nuclear "power" sources in space.
Radioisotope power- this generates electricity because the decay of the isotope heats a thermocouple junction that generates a voltage. I'll bet this is the kind they are using on the spacecraft in question, and it has been used on many other spacecraft, including the Voyager series. Not much isotope is needed, so even if the spacecraft crashes, minimal contamination would occur.
Nuclear reactor power- another way to generate electricity in space is to have a full fledged nuclear reactor onboard the spacecraft. These designs are *very* cool. Generally they use liquid sodium as the conduction medium. Remember, mass is the determining factor in the design. To my knowledge these have never been actually used in space.
Nuclear powered rocket- the most cool rocket ever. Uses a nuclear reactor, that has hydrogen gas "fuel" running through it, superheating that gas. The gas is then ejected out the nozzle at super high speed to provide thrust. There is no electricity generation involved. As mentioned earlier, these rockets are banned by a treaty. None have every launched to my knowledge.
I'm just waiting for a nuclear/water or nuclear/hydrogen powered spacecraft. That'll probably be what will open up the solar system to general buisness. A nuclear/water engine and the proper exploitation of the asteriods and NEOs.
How big is JIMO going to be? they don't mention it, and how heavy will it be?
The biggest payload capability is the Ariane 5 with a ten tonne payload. Space shuttles have 12.5 tonnes capability.
I'm too sexy for you.
HAL would be the most complicated component of a Jupiter mission. In the early seventies, we had most of the spaceflight technology protrayed in 2001. What we didn't have were the HAL artificial intelligence and the suspended-animation chambers. (I'll be happy to never have both on the same spacecraft after that movie. :)
I think it's eventually going to be easier to build life support systems for humans that to make human-like AI. So, for ultra complicated deep-space missions, the humans will provide the brains and the robotics will provide the eyes, ears, and limbs. (Consider an extremely complicated Mars mission... the light-travel time delay is too long to "joy-stick" the detailed actions of the robotics, and the software is already so complicated on current missions that it's difficult to produce. Eventually it will become very helpful to have humans within a millisecond or two of light-travel lag so they can joystick the tasks.)
There will be life when we get back either way.
upon arrival in the jovian neighborhood, and obelisk with the dimensions in the ratio of 1X4X9 will obliterate it..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Is six million dollars an honest amount for this project? It takes like 2 billion (or did) to make a stealth fighter/bomber and we already have the design down! They, on the other hand, are going to have to build the ship and a nuclear core (or something) and ensure it works for 6 million dollars? Games are starting to cost this much and do much less [sarcasm]. Seriously though, this seems like a starter fund. Hit or miss, I don't see this one staying at or lower than $6 million even though it's just to make the design (and test I assume as it's a study)!
nuff said!
The good news is that we found water on Europa.
The bad news is that we crashed our space probe and contaminated all the water.
hahaha if only I had mod points....
1) Pick up a book on nuclear energy before bitching, please.
2) You are surrounded by radiation. Your clothes are slightly radioactive, your coffee table is slightly radioactive, your blow-dryer is radioactive, everything. The amount of radiation exposure you suffer as a result of sitting infront of your monitor and nearby kitchen appliances is significantly HIGHER than the degree of radiation exposure one would suffer from being down wind of an explosion you people say will ultimately happen.
3) Suppose it does happen. Do you know how big Earth is? The damage would occur in the space of less than a pin prick on a global scale, and would probably occur over an ocean, and not land. Even if one did blow up and scatter big stinky radioactive fallout all over the earth, it would be spread out so thinly that by the time it reached the ground where we are, you wouldn't even be able to differentiate it between the normal ambient radiation already there.
Use your heads and do your homework, hippies.
Bowie J. Poag
The real reason the US government is pushing for nuclear propulsion for civilian use is that it gives it a cover under which to explore putting other kinds of nuclear devices into orbits: nuclear-powered particle weapons, atom bombs, etc.
Right now, that's hard to do because there is no infrastructure for developing and deploying that kind of technology--anything combining nuclear power and space would have to be done in complete secrecy. But once there is a thriving civilian industry, nobody will notice if a little bit of that work is diverted for military purposes.
Because of its military implications, the US should not be permitted to do this unilaterally. If we ever get nuclear propulsion, the technology should be developed openly and any nation using it should be subject to tight international inspections and controls.
looks kind of like this as well. hopefully they wont bring sam niel along with them.
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My argument is simply that solar sails have not been proven an effective way to move humans and cargo across interplanetary distances. Rockets have proven that they can do that. Today's chemical-powered rockets lack the velocity to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. They also lack the ability to generate significant thrust for the duration of a mission. By using nuclear resources to generate propulsion, we are addressing both those issues. Solar sails will require months, perhaps years, to get up to speed, and we really have no clue if they'll work at all in the outer Solar System.
Solar sails have a nice romantic feel, and it is easy just to say "use the most appropriate technology" without asking what "appropriate for what?", but I doubt they will be used for serious space transportation anymore than sailing ships are used for serious sea-going transportation here on Earth. We moved on as soon as we had better propulsion technology.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Wasn't project prometheus about dropping the Nukes out the back and channelling the explosions to provide the proper lift? I dunno if that is really enviormentally sound
Finally we can nuke other planets, that will learn those other lifeforms. Is this also part of the axis of evil?
weak nuclear reactions should be renamed to something that sounds safer, like iPower or ePower. The lay persons fears of what they don't know or even worse what they think they know are holding the advancement of civilization back.
why are most people that are un-educated or expirienced in something fear it and then when someone that comes along that knows about it comes along and says its safe and bennificial they come up with all kinds of excuses to not go along with it or try to hold it back, when its such a sipple step
Read carefully, mods. Operative word in the quip was "foam".
Recent social commentary: it's funny, laugh.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Now we lose a spacecraft and it can turn into a Space bomb. Ans piss-off the neighbors someday. This is really a great idea. Where will it launch from so I can get as far away as possible. Maybe I should get out the bomb shelf drawings and start building it now.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Given the history of reliability of US spacecraft, I'd feel much safer if the contract had been awarded to the Russians.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
I'm just curious, but have we had any missions with RTGs aboard that have failed on launch before? have we ever de-orbited a sattelite with an RTG aboard? Testing is fine and dandy, but are there any examples of how these capsules behave in a real failure?
I think the anti-nuclear crowd have NO understanding of nuclear power, to say the least.
Let's take a look at Chernobyl, the anti-nuke crowd's favorite example of nuclear hazards. There were two major things about that disaster: 1) there was NO containment structure to keep the radioactive particle release to a reasonable level if something did go wrong, and 2) the reactor's design was an inherently unsafe design to start with. That ill-advised test caused the fissile material to overheat, and when they tried to moderate it with graphite rods the result was a major explosion of radioactive materials into the air.
The latest in nuclear reactor designs (the pebble-bed reactor) is vastly more safer than previous nuclear reactors, since by design it is nearly impossible to melt down the fissile material in the reactor itself. Also, unlike older reactor designs the pebble-bed reactor doesn't need massive cooling structures, which adds a lot to the cost of construction. Because of its inherent safety, that's why the Prometheus reactors for space use will be pebble-bed units, which don't need to be large-sized units like the old NERVA engines tested during the 1960's.
And they certainly don't understand nuclear waste storage, either. Today, nuclear waste can be made much less dangerous by mixing the waste with glass (which right there cuts the radioactive output significantly) and then stored in disused salt mines and/or salt domes above spent oil fields. Given that salt is an excellent absorber of radiation, that cuts the radioactive risk even further. In many cases, the higher-level radioactive waste could be re-processed into new nuclear fuel or create nuclear materials for radiotherapy cancer treatments.
New you know why I detest the anti-nuclear crowd in many ways. (getting off soapbox)
You should read this article called: Opening the Next Frontier. Shows, step by step how we could expand outwards into the next big frontier... Space, using nuclear powered ships.
Wasn't there a project called Iridium that tried this? IIRC, they de-orbited their last comsat this year.
Why is it that:
Americans can have nuclear material. The rest of the world is not allowed
Americans can polute, the world, the solar system, etc. The rest of the world is not allowed
Americans can develop new nuclear weapons. The rest of the world is not allowed.
Such double standards. And before you sprout rubbish like "we can be trusted". Just look at what happened in Iraq. Just ask anyone living under the threat of American attack.
is that in Soviet Russia, the treaties abide by YOU!?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The US Government doesn't need permission from 'environmentalists'. They conveniently marginalize themselves so that the popular mandate works against them
Space cannot be polluted by radiation, ever hear of that thing called the Sun? Try a nice, alpha-particle tan from it sometime.
Have a nice day.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I think it is hight time that we discovered Naquadria and developed a stable chain-reaction whereas we could conduct space travel. The power produced should create rip in sub-space to permit sub-space travel in the X-303.
It already has been, of course. Why else would they name it Project Prometheus and say that it's to research "nuclear" powered craft?
My bet is that man-"kind" will kill its first alien on another planet on June31 2012.
We'll be eating them by 2075.
Can I have fries with my Europa-pie?
Quite sad really, are we really a cancer?
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
Is there anyone else who read the name and immediately thought Juicy Mo would be a better acronym?
-the hermit
Yes, NASA has launches probes powered by radioactive decay. There's a big difference between that and a rocket with an active nuclear reaction in its engine.
Read the article. This uses an ion drive and a nuclear-electric generator. The concept drawing has these at opposite ends of the craft, so there are no exhaust stream issues.
You could build a craft like this using the same kind of radiothermal generators that have been used in previous missions. This craft specs a power source a hundred times stronger, which means either an RTEG with an isotope that's a hundred times shorter lived, or an induced fission reactor (see below).
What if the rocket blows up?
Any fuel pellets sent up in a space probe will be encased in shells that can survive explosion and re-entry. This is already proven technology, tested for sending up the RTEGs that are already used.
Rocket explodes, fuel pellets land intact in the debris field, fuel pellets are collected by hazmat teams without contaminating the surroundings.
What if it's cold and the O-ring on a control rod cracks, causing the reactor to overheat?
An RTEG is sub-critical - there is no failure mechanism.
If it's an induced fission reactor (the kind that needs control), it'll almost certainly be a self-balancing one like the Slowpoke that has no moving parts (it has to last for decades with no maintenance). You couldn't destabilize a reactor like that if you _wanted_ to, and it requires no active control.
The way these reactors work is that the support frame and/or the housings for the fuel pellets use a material with a very high rate of thermal expansion; turn up the heat, and the fuel pellets move farther apart, shutting down the reactor - it balances just on the edge of shutoff.
Damage it, and at worst you break it up, causing instant shutdown (there's no longer enough material in one place for criticality).
What if the launch has to be aborted before the rocket has reached orbital velocities and the reactor has to fall to earth?
Then the rocket is detonated, and you have the same thing happening as with a rocket explosion - several dozen radioactive marbles, intact, littering the landscape.
In summary, your objections are puzzling at best.
...where are the nuclear wessels?
(seriously though, is it just me or reality is becoming more and more animeish? Kaze no Tani no Naushika anyone?)
But here's the point: exploring an icy moon billions of kilometres away with a nuclear-powered spacecraft, which is the topic of the story, will probably not change the global balance of power.
No, but creating the infrastructure and public opinion change that would allow the US military to put fission and fusion reactors into space will affect the balance of power.
Actually, I doubt it. The kinds of reactor used on this style of probe are completely useless as weapons, and require no industry retooling. What you'd have to worry about would be a) warheads in space, and b) _large_ fission reactors in space. Completely different beasts.
The only way we will get humans to Mars will be using nuclear propulsion and nuclear power sources(RTGs). Period.
Not so. Robert Zubrin's book The Case For Mars outlines a very solid mission plan for getting there using existing chemical rocket technology, e.g. Energia or Saturn V.
Nuclear propulsion would be better, but it's not the only option.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
That isn't quite true, it's just not the way one would want to power a vehicle. For a fixed installation, you can build solar concentrators as big as you need... the thermite/water/plastic blob trick works just as well around the orbit of Jupiter as anything else, you just need more reflectors for X amount of power.
Tech Public Policy stuff
it just strikes me odd, that something ... ..err.. proof ..errr.. half-life ..er.. well?
...
just stays warm when everything else in the univers is cooling down
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not that i understand it, but using laws of
entrophy to
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i-ja dont think this is a normal. just because we can "measure"(?) radioaktivity means we fully understand it, i think. HEY! but it works.
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wait-a-minute:
"The "zeroth law" states that if two systems are at the same time in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. "
"The first law of thermodynamics is the application of the conservation of energy principle to heat and thermodynamic processes"
"The second law of thermodynamics is a general principle which places constraints upon the direction of heat transfer and the attainable efficiencies of heat engines. In so doing, it goes beyond the limitations imposed by the first law of thermodynamics..."
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dooh, why is this stuff always warm?
oh i get it, it's a long term "heating-blanket".
a battery, okay! less head-ache.
i'm still trying to convice them to use it (uranium/plutonium) for the time-maschine but they won't listen, nope, they just put it ontop of a rocket
"whatz was dat? a dent in time-spasche?"