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Russia Plans Martian Nuclear Station
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that Russian scientists have announced plans to build a nuclear power station on Mars.
They say that all the necessary technical drawings have now been completed, and all will be ready for the construction work to begin. The power plant should be up and running by 2030."
Here come the fucking jokes.
...And so it was fortold by prophet Kim Stanley Robinson. Too bad the date was a little off.
And with all of the demand for a nuclear power plant on Mars, it's a miracle this wasn't created earlier!
they forgot to mention that this requires the US to have placed a whole union local of construction workers on the moon by 2025...
Question is, what do they need a nuke plant on Mars for? Oh, yeah-colonisation.
Will Bush have what it takes to challenge the Russians in the race to claim Mars?
...That way, at least SOMEONE will set foot on Mars in my lifetime. I mean, jeez, Arthur C. Clarke thought we'd be to Saturn by now, and we probably would be if we'd kept up what we were doing in the 60's.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
There'll be a power station but still no manned missions by then.
Ah, pessimism...
This is ridiculous, Russia can't afford the upkeep on the International Space Station, let alone Mars adventures, even with the international support the article mentions, this is just hot air. It may be prestigious to be the first nation with a base on Mars, but it just isn't going to happen for Russia in the next 30 years.
Bugs eat their habitat duh
Will it be called Chernobyl II?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
They have enough trouble keeping their nuclear stockpiles in check here on earth!
How the hell are they supposed to keep them safe from those darn homosexual Martians?
Eh? What was so bad about mir? So they had to bring it down. Nothing lasts forever...
On the bright side, after Red Planet and Mission to Mars, they can 'Pull A Chernobyl' and it'll still be only the third worst Mars disaster ever.
Please help metamoderate.
1. Build Nuclear Power Plant on Mars
2.
3. Profit!
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.
In Russia, Russian Russians Russia Russia?
Oh, fuck.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
And just how are they planning to fund all this? Considering the dilapidated state of the russian economy at the moment, you'd think they'd be more concerned with looking after terraferma and getting their house straight back home instead of firing billions of dollars into outer space.
You mean the station that was a great success and outlasted its design lifetime?
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
But boy are those scientists going to be pissed when someone points out where Mars actually is.
I also love:
Scientists say that the station is now almost ready to be built - all they have to do is to find a way to protect staff and environment from radiation
What about the small problem of finding 6 people to go to Mars, to work in a nuclear power station for no people for 30 years?. I think they have been watching 'The Simpson's' too much.
So it needs people on Mars to run it, and people on Mars to take advantage of it. Do they actually have any firm plans for getting people to Mars?
I suppose maybe since it's so much easier to get hardward to Mars that maybe they'll send the nuclear power plant there and then use that to justify research into getting people over there. "After all, we've already got the equipment there for them to use, and it will be a waste if we don't send anyone."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Well, if martians weren't green to begin with, they will be now ..
.. er .. DIRT OF MARS!"
I'm waiting for GreenPeace to start campaigning though. "STOP POLLUTING THE
If they can pull this off it should be a good indication of how well building things on mars will work. In order to have any long-term mission being able to pre-build things is crucial.
Mars is about as close as I would want a Russian built nuclear power plant....
Building the transmission lines to bring the generated power to Earth is left as an exercise to the reader ?
They should think first on getting men on Mars. And then back to Earth. Alive. What to do there should be planned later, since of course there will be unpredicted issues about the environment. And there would be no point placing a power plant there if there were no people to use that power for something.
Bring on the IN SOVIET MARS jokes.
[n/t]
Is the biggest vaporware of world history... Even Duke Nukem Forever will be released before this ever happens =)
Reading "They say that all the necessary technical drawings have now been completed" and I know I don't need to read anymore. Fsckin' turkies... What are they thinkin'?
Peace out, or war in... Whichever you prefer.
slons
This will be right up there with Flying Cars, Trips to Saturn, Teleportation, and what else can we think of that never materialized from promises year's ago? (No DukeNukem jokes please)
:P
Best part? Contractors have 26 years to be proved wrong
"I want my hoovercraft!"
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred With American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
The power plant should be up and running by 2030.
Power station timelines rock. I'd love to propose this kind of schedule for my projects.
"New Version? Sure, we should start beta testing in (deep, echoing voice) the year 2030."
-n-
This is efficiency. When people does arrive to Mars in the future the planet will be enough contaminated to be inhabitable.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
The main thing that will worry most people is where the fuel is comming from.
Uranium may well be available on Mars, but I can't imagine they will have the facilities to mine it.
If that means they have to take it from Earth then it could be messy if a launch goes wrong.
That said, I guess they won't need much fuel, its not like there are going to be any big cities any time soon...
Spell checker (c) creative spelling inc. (aka my dyslexic brain)
More power to them! Oh, wait...
The BBC is reporting this? Wow, from the title, i would have thought that it would come from one of these fine sources.
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
Perhaps the plausibility(laughability) of this project and the scale it will take might force some of the others countries with ambitious space ideas to start actively planning and persuing those ideas; at the benefit of the current space projects. If anything I think this idea seems more like a thought gambit, akin to "Well, here's what we've put on the table, how about you?" than an actual bid to get people or supplies onto Mars.
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
Is that the Russian space program is bankrupt. They had great difficulty even in maintaining their obligations to the ISS, and their shuttle program was scrapped and turned into a carnival ride. That is not to say that they don't have some great ideas and hardware. Maybe they can partner with India or China or the US and actually take their designs off the drawing board.
My rights don't need management.
Scientists say that the station is now almost ready to be built - all they have to do is to find a way to protect staff and environment from radiation.
All they have left to do is everything.
The enviromentalist always have a field day protesting whenever a sattelite goes up with a nuclear battery, unless the russians plan on mining uranium in space (unlikely)
Just imagine if something went wrong like chernobyl. Except this time it's 30 miles in the air where it can travel around the globe quite nicely.
Don't get me wrong, i'm all for space exploration, but the first hurdle Russia will have to overcome is a social one, not technilogical.
All this interest in space has me worried a bit. Not about people crashing down or reactors being pulverized in the atmosphere, but about the same flaw people made when using other forms of mass transportation for the first time. Standards. For example think of old railways; the rails used to be at different lengths apart, depending on which company owned said railway. That was a major bugger if you had to travel over railways owned by multiple companies. I think that between continents and some countires it's still an issue. And how about shipping? Everything used to be handled individually, using cargo nets and common cranes to lift goods on board. Nowadays everyone uses containers when shipping goods around the world. Lorries/trucks, trains, cranes and various things are used to transport containers around when they reach land and with great efficiency, when compared to the old way of unloading from ship, storing in warehouse, loading in train, transporting, unloading. Also important are pallets, which are more or less standardized these days.
The way this affects the current "space race" (a bit early to call it that but what the hell...) is that everyone is now developing their own transportation system. It's quite obvious that as a method of delivery, the shuttle is an immense failure due to extreme costs and limited capacity and that it's strong points are out of the scope of this comment. What would be ideal would be a solution where spacecraft can lift standard shipping containers (yes, those same ones used all over the world that can be carried around by various methods) into orbit and then to wherever the hell you want them. The fact that contianers are easy to get a hold of for machinery such as cranes should make them quite useful in space for both transport and storage. Just imagine a large structure made out of girders with container clamps all around and a few mobile crans to move stuff around...
Hate me!
"I don't do America/Russia jokes anymore, haven't for ten years. Now I do observational commedy about relationships and stuff.", Yackov Shmirnov to Bobby Hill
(Do we really want the soviets building ANYTHING that is REMOTELY dangerous? Don't give me that "cold war is over" crap either, I saw Stalin burst out of his coffin on the Simpsons!)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
"Scientists say that the station is now almost ready to be built - all they have to do is to find a way to protect staff and environment from radiation. " yeah, thats all, its not like its hard or anything. Seeing as how there are already so many people that have been on Mars... oh wait; my bad.
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When my plans for world domination come to fruition in 2032 I'll set my sights on Mars as my next challenge!
Its crew will build both the [power] station and the research base for all future expeditions. So how exactly will they power the construction of the power station? Perhaps another nuclear power plant?
You know, I just remembered why we don't launch nuclear waste out into space. It would -really- suck if it blew up before it cleared orbit, wouldn't it?
Satellites don't contain much at all in the way of nuclear power because their needs are so low. How much material are they sending up, and how do they plan on keeping us safe if the launch vehicle has, uh, 'issues'? You'd think even with a creatively planned trajectory, you'd end up spreading material over a massive area...
Please help metamoderate.
1) Build an expensive nuclear power plant on an uninhabited planet.
2) ???
3) Profit?
See, that's where you're wrong!
What we need to do is throw some of those nifty processors that make fuel from Martian air plus a few habitat modules at the red planet every time we can afford to do so. When there is enough there to provide basic life support for people for, say six months, ship off a load of people.
Have the best guess at the necessary tools waiting for them and let them try and live there forever. You'd get hundreds of useful volunteers even if you only gave them a 50% chance of lasting a year. And by God, even if every last one of them died, we'd learn so much from them. Earth has about 5-6 BILLION people too many... throwing a few *volunteers* on a probable suicide mission in the name of knowledge and expanding human frontiers is NOT insanity.
... that the Russians would escape while we weren't watching them.
China, Russia, India - tell us when you get there!
The California State Governement is investigating a 210 million mile long extension cord. One representative gave the date of 2030 as the estimated date of completion.
So will they be connecting it to the global grid?
Perhaps when its not their own people but the future of their space program they will build this station properly.
Tragek
'The Red Planet'
Who have the smallest nuclear reactor?
Seeing past Russian succes and all the great things they did for Ukraine, I think that space is the logical next step.
</sarcasm>
Although I don't know whether the Russians can actually pull this off, it does demonstrate a very good idea.
Send the equipment ahead.
When the US sends a manned probe (unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that anyone else can do it, let alone do it first; only the US has the resources, finances, and expertise available to perform these feats of super-engineering), how much easier will the mission be if most of their cargo is already there ahead of them? Everything they'd need to build a base station and perform experiments would be ready and waiting, greatly simplifying the task of getting the astronauts there in the first place.
It's almost certainly a lot easier to get astronauts to Mars than it is to get astronauts and 100 tonnes of non-spaceflight equipment to Mars.
Hahahaha, the US and Russia can't even finish a full blown space station (ISS) just around earth orbit, and we're supposed to expect they plan to build a nuke station on Mars?
HAHAHAHA
Isn't it a little dangerous, on launch and so far away from any help if anything goes wrong? How much power do they need out there anyway, and what's wrong with solar, or even wind? Hell, what about excercise bikes wired to electrical cocktail shakers? I mean honestly, why choose the most dangerous power source we can think of, mount it on a rocket and send it somewhere way beyond the limit of the manufacteurers warenty?
as this isn't the first time they've pioneered space-related exploration. Though one cringes at the thought of a meltdown, which would endager further exploration.
A blog like any other.
Oh, forget it.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
?? What the hell was wrong with MIR?
So it didn't splatter all over the Aus outback, like Skylab, big deal!.
(For the record, I'm all for shooting crap at Australia from space.)
G/
My Paintball Pics
Can't we keep russia's problems in russia?
Seriously, though, Russia can't even keep up payments on the ISS. No one in the world right now has any plans on how to ship a live human being to Mars (and have him remain live there). "Technical drawings" alone won't cut it; I have some technical drawings in my closet that show how to build an SSTO spacecraft out of crayons (I was in kindergarten at the time of this techincal breakthrough), but I am not holding my breath waiting for NASA to knock on my door.
>|<*:=
Only $10,000 down! You make payment right now, I let you pick corner room or lake-side unit.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Ah yes, but will it run Linux?
>:(
I should've opted for "Anonymous coward"
nothing.can.stop.me.now
But have we evaluated the effects this may have on the Martians?
Such inspiring statements as:
"all they have to do is to find a way to protect staff and environment from radiation."
and:
"The only stumbling block is how to deliver ready-made building blocks to a construction site 300 million kilometres"
how could it not be a success?
Why not send the astronauts there with no plans of getting them back? I don't mean abandon them to die...
I think it would be easier to have a one-way manned flight with resupplies and maybe additional astronauts following, all with the understanding that it will probably be decades and perhaps after their death from old age before there will be two-way travel.
You'd just have to set them up with an internet connection so they didn't get bored. Unfortunately, pings to Mars will measure in minutes, so they won't be able to play Half-Life 4 online. We could give them an obscene amount of bandwidth and upload the whole internet to them every night, though, so they could have lag free connections to static material...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
*sigh*
safer, and probably more reliable. http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/energy/article s/Power_experience.pdf
I find it intriguing and interesting, even a bit exciting that they not only want to go to Mars, but that they want to build a base and a nuclear plant up there to power it. But the article (I know, I'm one of those weird people that actually reads the articles every now and then) was severely lacking in info. WHY do they want to go? For the mere "race" aspect? For research? In the article itself it states "the Red Planet is extremely inhospitable" and then also says how they want a permanent station there. That is a LOT of time, money, and resources for something trivial...yet they don't even mention what their main reason for all this is. Hmmm...anyone have any insights? Everyone excited and ready to see what this will be about in our lifetime?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Oh wait, what about those pesky facts again? A space shuttle goes to the ISS costs $500M, a Russian rocket comes for $20M. Well... seems like only one of those systems is actually operational now.
Yes, Russia is short on money, especially compared to the US. They may not have as much glitzy fancy PR for their latest experimental craft as NASA gets. But don't discount the fact that for the same buck, they crank out a lot more than western space agencies.
For what it's worth, I work in a software company with one Russian employee. Who happens to make everyone else look bad; just too darn good that guy.
I'm not saying they don't have tallented people, heck, some of my best friends are Russian, just that the Russian state is virtually bankrupt. 20m US is pocket change to the US, it is a major deal in Russia.
I did read the article and it basically is working on the idea of maintaining a manned presence on Mars.
OTOH, this can pump some added fuel into the space race again. I digress (sorry) for what? To make another political leap and bound for bragging rights only to not go back again for another 50 years.I propose the following.
- learn to survive extreme levels of radiation (underground bases?)
- build construction facilities on moon
- serve moon as launching platform (1/6 (16%) the gravity)
- THEN go to mars
- ...
- build lunar whore motels
- PROFIT!!
Of course there are many other potential uses of moon.Don't we have more money than Russia? And they dare exceed us in Space technology? And the word Nuclear is in there?
Call up G.W., and get Larry Ellison down here, I smell a hostile takeover!
There is a Russian version of the article, in which there is this paragraph (in my translation):
The scientists admit that they have no idea how this [taking large pre-built components and delivering them 300 mln km away] can be achieved. However, they are certain that once the station starts operating, all future inhabitants of Mars will have plenty of electrical power for many years to come.
Now THIS is what I call vaporware. :)
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I can see the headlines now:
All of Russia was plunged into total darkness tonight, when their Mars plant transmission lines were accidently severed by an orbiting Soyuz rocket piloted by a joyriding Lance Bass.
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
red planet
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, don't you see? They're just planning this right now. Yes, they will need to get some people to Mars to take advantage of this so they also have a plan to build three giant spaceships to colonize the new planet. One will contain people that actually do work--builders, factory workers and the like--one will contain the thinkers and planners and one will contain all those vital middle level people, such as hairdressers and efficiency consultants. And guess which ship will blast off first?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
"Its very pretty Bishop, but what are we looking at?"
/ There is is , emergency venting!.
I wounder how the semi-recent falls on US stock markets has been showen in the Media in Russia.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a 14-month high of 9412.66 today.
or the bankruptchy of several States,
No State is bankrupt. Some have serious budget deficits, but a State would only be bankrupt if, after liquidating its property, it still couldn't cover its shortfall. No State is anywhere even vaguely near this.
or the grounding of the US shuttle program
Nobody is suggesting that the shuttles are grounded because the American government can't pay to run them. It's obvious to everyone that they've been grounded for safety reasons.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Forget North Korea, now the Martians will have the bomb!
Any one believe this story? (please give me your email i've got lots of penis enlargement pills to sell you)
Next on Slashdot:
"Elvis seen alive on Mars"
"Jesus Christ journeyed to Mars"
"Motherboard Testing on Mars"
and last but not least.....(drumroll)...
"MarsCam!" see the pretty martian women shake their booty!
and launch now, they can save a bundle on the fuel costs to get there.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
They'll do it anyway. And we'll have a half-assed and dangerous nuclear power plant on mars.
While I'm all for a mission to mars, it should be a very well financed, international, and permenent settlement. The people sent there should not be coming back.
.
I wonder who came up with this plan. There is no way this is feasable, with the Russian budget the way it is....This really makes me LOL. Some poor underling was "hey lets put a nuke station on mars, I've done the comp work, its all a go!"
Yeah right.
Aint gonna happen. And if it does where are they gonna get all the water to cool the reactor? Oh they are going to melt ice, make a river? Oh they are going to cool it down with air? OK mars is COLD it really is, but how exactly do you control a reactor with a variable atmosphere that is neat nonexistant?
Am I just an armchair scientist or am I rightly confused by just how they plan to make this work?
Because the martians we see in movies don't look messed up enough, they need nuclear radiation to give their look the extra touch of "makes ya wanna vomit" style...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
I don't think it will ever happen. That being said, it would finally answer that whole meaning of life deal.
The phrase "cart before the horse" has special meaning here. In small moves, guys, in small moves.
Well, if they've ALREADY finished the DRAWINGS, it's as good as done.
My Dragon is almost in my driveway too.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
...don't they remember what happened on Sept 13, 1999!?!
"On Soviet Mars nuclear plants power you!"
yeah thats what there going for, to have nuke plants on mars to power you. Stop copying the headline.
Between the radiation and the rather lengthy trip, will the first ones on Mars evolve into funny little men hell-bent on blowing up earth because it blocks their view of venus?
8==8 Bones 8==8
... isn't even worthy of the title "junk science." It's been debunked thoroughly.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
I'd really like to see this happen.
But 2030? Er, ok, good luck with that one. Not to be a pessimist, maybe we'll (the humans) get there by 2130.
Let's be serious here. Russia has plenty on its hands to deal with before getting a space program that ambitious going.
-- taking over the world, we are.
The great thing about Mars is, there's no environmentalists. So Mars won't have an energy crisis like we do here :)
:)
:)
BANANA Environmentalists...
Build Absolutely Nothing Around Nobody, Any time.
(if you're liberal, c'mon laugh, it's funny. You guys can dish out the Bush jokes, at least let us have a few pokes
2038-01-19T03:14:07Z... tick...
Warning, critical maintenance 2000 years overdue! Abort, Retry, Cancel?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
> The scientists admit that they have no idea how
> this [taking large pre-built components and
> delivering them 300 mln km away] can be achieved.
> However, they are certain that once the station
> starts operating, all future inhabitants of Mars
> will have plenty of electrical power for many
> years to come.
Oh, now it all makes sense.
So what they're doing is simply equivalent to building roads to a future suburb of city. "No-one lives here yet, but we'll be ready for them when they get here". And the 6 guys, or maybe 5 guys and an extremely popular woman, who get dropped on Mars and told "make it so" are the just equivalent of the guys who build the bridges for the new roads to cross.
If there's a sudden mass disappearance of Swedish backpackers "with a thirst for adventure" in about 20-25 years time, I'll know where to direct the sniffer dogs.
I hope Russia does put together a concerted effort to reach Mars and establish a human presence there. Their space program may be poor and mothballed by the government, but that isn't going to stop them from dreaming and trying to achieve those dreams.
This is the sort of thing that we need to give NASA a swift kick in the butt. The self proclaimed richest nation in the world can't be bothered to spend money to futher scientific ambition like this, and would rather spend all their resources defending themselves against an enemy that does exist, and it takes a dirt poor, ex-superpower to do anything about it.
Sorry guys, but it looks to me like you're still trying to fight the old fight, and haven't quite realized yet that the world has passed you bye.
This is not a sig.
The Russians? They've got plans for a nuclear power plant on Mars. 10/10 for style, boys. It's refreshing to see a little ambition for once.
Still, there are practical uses. With a reasonable supply of water, a nuclear power plant could be used to create oxygen and hydrogen, both for surviving on and performing experiments, and for fueling any return craft.
Martians concerned over Russian nuke plans (October 5th, 2006)
Rocky Canyon, MARS - Local residents plan to block Russian efforts to build nuclear power plants on Mars. Fearing potential health risks from nuclear accidents and what they claim to be a spotty safety record from Russians, representatives of a coalition of Martian leaders plan to raise awareness of the issues and protect or attempt to block the Russian plans. "Not in my back yard!" claims local long-time resident Marvin the Martian, "We do not want an Earth-shattering kaboom on our planet. We have no demodulator for nuclear waste."
Local retiree, Flash Gordon, points out that other environmentally sound energy alternatives are available like geothermal and solar energy. "I don't understand why we should be the dumping ground for Earth's waste. I'm also concerned about their need to use what little water we have to cool their power plants. It sounds like a bad idea to me."
Russia's Nuclear Energy Ministry plans to send a delegation to the planet in 2010 to hold a series of public hearings and town meetings on the matter. "We hope that once the great people of Mars learn the facts about our advances in safety of nuclear energy, that they will welcome a new cheaper source of energy," informed Dr. Strangelove, interim leader of the earth-based planning and research committee. The spotty record of Terran nuclear safety is well known to Martians, including the well-known 20th century Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents and the San Onofre security incident last year.
Total Recall star and former California Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger is rumored to be an investor in the contruction company contracted by the Russian agency to develop the terra-forming technology required to build the power plant. When asked about his links between his commercial investments and campaign contributions to Russian elected officials, he withheld comment.
Mars and Earth are seperated by millions of miles, both literally and apparently in viewpoints about the nuclear project. We look forward to seeing if they can come closer together on this issue.
What about the small problem of finding 6 people to go to Mars, to work in a nuclear power station for no people for 30 years?
Hell, I'd love to get the chance to go to Mars... even if it meant working on a nuclear reactor for 30 years (actually, that would probably be rather interesting too!), and likely dying there (Whether by accident, or by one-way trip). If any of you russians are looking for someone in their early twenties with a degree in electrical engineering, call me up!
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
The space station was done on a US budget, not a Soviet one. The Russians have always worked with simple equipment where as we take the approach of technology being the answer to all. To be honest, had we really wanted to make it possible for all us to be up there, we would have done simple, repeatable systems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Now I know why it's called the Red Planet.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have completed my plans to build a Martian crematorium for passed-away nuclear power plant technicians. This first permanent extraterrestrial crematorium will be dedicated to help remember the dedicated scientists, as well as pet cats, dogs and aligators, who could not survive the blistering radiation and isolation of living on Mars. It should be up and running by 2029, provided I find a way to deliver my ready-made building blocks to a construction site 300 million kilometers away from Earth.
my blog
At least with Chernobyl II on The Red Planet, the impact and death toll won't be nearly as high. I mean, it's not like there will be many people there anyways.
hey!
Maybe it's Chernobyl, but somehow I still don't trust Russian nuclear reactor designs.
If you're gonna put a nuclear reactor on Mars, ferchrissake, make it a CANDU. Not only was the CANDU designed in Canada (w00t!), but it's also really, really safe.
but the effect was an even more oppressive (if less inbred) government. If a revolution comes full-circle, it's a failure.
I think a few minor trade colonies taking on the british empire was more impressive, in that it took us more than 200 years to start back on the downward spiral. Give it another hundred years, and we'll have street riots against the RIAA for placing a 1000% tax on anything that can transfer or store information of any kind, and a mandate of DRM.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I just wonder, why MARS? This type of major construction project is of course going to run into unexpected difficulties. Why don't we at least practice building something easier first. A simple base on the Moon seems like a much more practical starting point. Let's do it somewhere (relatively) close to get a better feel for the challenges we'll face. Then take those lessons and apply them to more exotic missions. (Although I'd still consider a base on the Moon pretty exotic and plenty "prestigious" to do first!)
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Mars builds power plants on YOU!
:)
Sorry, just had to.
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
Russia's doing it right...They're using the ISS which they got the americans to pay for as a floating hotel where they get 100% of the revenue, then they use the money to really advance space technology while NASA is devoting 95% of their rocket scientists to figuring out why nobody is interested in what they do.
Companies are willing to go to great length to make Walmart happy. Why do you think that bar codes on products ever took hold? It'd also give normal people a compelling reason to want to go to Mars. Ma and Pa will want to check out that new Super-Super-Walmart. At least For once we wouldn't have to listen about Walmart driving local shops out of business.
Seriously, this is your main concern about space travel???? Silly problem gets silly solution. The whole reason for your standard container sizes is to reduce cost. Space travel isn't cheap and isn't done on a massive enough scale to need this yet. Maybe in a hundred years you'll be a visionary but for know just steal standard sized boxes from behind Walmart.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Mars Nukem Forever
so am I
ascii art
So now, when the martians start selling nuclear power to terrorist nations, planets, or galaxies, we can invade them, take it over, and call it even!
Minister For Energy: We need to build some more reactors to power mother russia!
President: NUCLEAR POWER!!! NUCLEAR POWER!!!! Shit...after the cluster f%#$ you guys made of chernobyl you want me to let you back near nuclear power again? Are you high? I wouldn't let you near a nuclear power plant if it was located on the other side of the f%$#in moon budy!
Minister For Energy: ummmmm, how 'bout mars?
President: yeah alright
If you are straight and you love women, then join the straight heteros association. Here's a sample of what you coul be having tonight. Hey! It even makes an alusion to goat sex! What more could you want?
Arthur C. Clarke thought we'd be to Saturn by now, and we probably would be if we'd kept up what we were doing in the 60's.
If our governments kept everything up at the rate they were in the 60s, humanity would have been replaced by a series of radioactive craters by now.
All things change for a reason.
If the nuclear reactor on the base blew up, would we be able to see anything here on earth given that it would be a clear night with minimal light polution and the base was facing earth?
I'm not certain how much safer they are in the case of a coolant loss (core exposure,) but the pile itself is more resistant to melting into a mass; if anything, individual pellets would melt through their containment and thus reduce the reaction. But still, those pellets are not light, and the accompanying machinery and generators will be very, very heavy. I think RTG's would be a better short-term solution...of course at the expense of irradiating their surroundings.
Actually, part of the point of a pebble-bed reactor is that it can't run away. Pellets expand as temperature increases, moving them outside of the envelope for criticality. The result is a core that automatically balances itself right at the critical threshold, resisting changes in either direction. The number of fuel spheres present (and the shape of the collection) determines the temperature at which the whole thing stabilizes (more material, and it needs to be farther apart - and so hotter - to stabilize). When designed with safety in mind (e.g. with the best possible core arrangement and little enough fuel to stay below problematic temperatures) there's no way for it to have a runaway reaction.
Tapping heat off drops the temperature, cooling the pile, and increasing the reaction rate until temperature stabilizes. Losing coolant causes it to heat and expand, dropping the reaction rate, and letting it stabilize. The only way you'd get an accident happening is by adding more fuel, or breaking up the fuel pebbles and carefully arranging fuel and graphite moderator for a higher reaction rate. Not going to happen by accident.
Re. RTGs, a radiothermal source generally doesn't cause activation of its surroundings. It's neutron radiation that does that; RTGs generally just emit alpha or beta radiation (depending on material used, of course). They're easy to shield, too (against primary radiation; you'll still get gama shining through, and x-rays as secondary radiation produced in the shielding).
A fission reactor, by contrast, produces neutron radiation and makes everything near the unshielded core radioactive.
We must not allow a Mars nuclear station gap!
Sorry, couldn't resist this one. :-)
Because it'll cost more to sustain life on the Moon than Mars due to transporting water
Moderators Moderators do your worst.
After all, I'm an Anonymous Coward
Posting logged out so the mod sticks.
Relavent link
Moderators Moderators do your worst.
After all, I'm an Anonymous Coward
I came to build power plants and chew bubblegum, but I am all out of gum. - Duke Nukem;)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
>>The most glaring hole in the conspiracy theory is: Where did the money go,
. There are links to other sites that have some other debunking pages.
Area 51 silly. We needed lots of money to keep up the research on the recovered UFOs.
>>and how did they keep the tens of thousands of contractors that would have had to be in on this silent?
They didn't know; or so the conspiracy theorists say. They were part of the plot.
But yes, the moon hoax conspiracy is a boatload of crap. Bad Astronomy does a handsome job debunking the arguments that are presented in the Fox show at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
The two biggest flaws IMHO follow:
1. Telemetry. Amateur radioheads with a ham radio set could have verified that there were at least transmissions being made from a path that was going near to the moon. No doubt the Soviets were paying careful attention to this as well. The only way to fake that is send an unmanned probe up and broadcast a recording.
2. Moon rocks. We have rocks from the moon. Or at least that are unlike any that we've seen on Earth, maybe with the exception of meteorites.
You gotta love this type of thinking. Let's go ahead and plan on f*cking up another planet before we're finished f*cking this one up!
Spread the RC luvin'
Somehow I think Russia just wanted to make the front page of /.
Does anyone know if the scientists in Doom were Russian? Somehow I figure they'll open the gates to hell there.
c'mon! the first thing you do when you start with a new map in games like Sim City - yeah - you go ahead and build a powerplant. then you connect roads, and then.. you set time-acceleration to max. and... profit!!
Guess what, doofus? A space race is costly, time-consuming, and worthless.
1. Telemetry. Amateur radioheads with a ham radio set could have verified that there were at least transmissions being made from a path that was going near to the moon. No doubt the Soviets were paying careful attention to this as well. The only way to fake that is send an unmanned probe up and broadcast a recording.
And, along those lines, didn't one of the missions leave behind a corner-reflecting mirror that can be used to bounce light off the moon and measure it's distance?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
>The only stumbling block is how to deliver >ready-made building blocks to a construction site >300 million kilometres (186.4 million miles) away >from Earth. i am 'pretty' sure this is not the ONLY stumbling block in a project like this. if russians cannot keep their nuclear power stations safe enough here on earth, how the hell they think about surviving in another planet?!? I was not so long time ago when there was a documentary about workers being drunk all day long in russian nuclear power plants...
class he-man extends man!
5. ???
6. Profit!!!
In Soviet Russia, martian nuclear reactor builds YOU!!!
On Soviet Mars ...
This is obviously a misplaced writeup from the instructions for the upcoming Command & Conquer: The Red Planet.
Them nuke reactors take tons of cash, though...better build several war miners. And point them at super-valuable fossil deposits.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The only reason manned spaceflight is expensive is because ALL spaceflight is terribly expensive.
All chemicaly-based flight (due to low ISP). An nuclear-pulse (Orion) based drive could have dropped the cost by several o.o.m.
Working for necessity's mother.
MHTGR?
Hopefully, Russia doing this will convince the US, Japan, and the EU to help supply funding and expertise and this will become a well-funded international mission.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Will technology advance if people are not trying to solve technological problems ?
Although scientific breakthroughs do occur, the best way to advance propulsion tech is by researching and using propulsion tech
Working for necessity's mother.
The scientists admit that their understanding of how it can be achieved is not comletely clear
And that means that the project of planning such a mission is not completed yet in its design stage. They achieved some progress in their design and have shown that the principle is doable. The published result is just preliminar. And before 2030 they have plenty of time to finish both design, implementation and even financing of the project. The question is: who is the customer?
Less is more !
I'm planning on building a fusion reactor on Neptune... I've got sketches on a napkin in front of me.
Put me on slashdot!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Russians? Nuclear? In space?
It's the goddamn apocalypse! This isn't funny anymore, grab your guns and head for a bomb shelter! Damn Commies, this wouldn't have happened if Truman was still President.
I'm glad at least some country has high hopes and wants to expand their horizons. The way I figure it, the United States won't put any resources into space travel until the Russians discover oil there.
"The power plant should be up and running by 2030"
And when is the fist "maintenance" shutdown scheduled?
[And you slashdotters know what I mean by "maintenance" shutdown, don't you?]
- "They misunderestimated me."
The more intelligent people will wonder "Why all the focus on Mars?"
The educated people know that a single hour's flight of an airplane, much less all these rockets, kills as much ozone as a third world person does in a year. So the educated will know that the cost of all this rocketry will be immense when looking at global warming and human lives.
So we get to the crux of the matter. The real reason there is a giant focus on Mars (and the Moon) is that the Earth doesn't have much time left. With all the CFC's in the atmosphere, many of which last over 5,000 years, the Earth is going to be just as inhospitable as Mars, if not more so, considering that Earth is closer to the Sun.
Jacques Cousteau said it well --
We are in the end game. Man has taken this beautiful planet and destroyed it. All the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religions in the world and man still doesn't have a clue about how to take care of what God created. It goes to show how low a creature Man really is.
And to top it off, the hubris of the scientists tells us we understand everything in the universe now. From our little speck of dust in our brief existence, nonetheless. With little scientist brains that don't even understand a cup of earth, consciousness, or much of physics, math, and other basic sciences. It just makes one laugh at the sheer folly of it all.
With some luck, I will be here to see the final crash. It'll make the whole of human history look like a DOTCOM horror story -- an entire planet killed by GREED.
Russia announced Doom 4, which should be ready.. Oh wait - by 2030?
Dephine URL
Sure, we could go to Mars. But what will it get you? Mars is a dead planet. There may be enough resources to run a colony. Fine, you have a million or so people living in a dome, breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, and eating hydroponically grown soyburgers. That's just a drop in the population bucket. And if that's the way you're going to live, why go all the way to Mars to do it? Why not just build your dome here on Earth?
Colonies on multiple worlds is insurance against world-destroying events. A very large asteroid impact could disrupt the crust or kick up enough dust to freeze the oceans over, killing most non-bacterial life on the planet. On the more mundane front, toss a few cobalt bombs around and you can gamma-sterilize all landmasses. It is extremely unlikely for a natural cataclysm to take out multiple colonized worlds at once. It is far more difficult for an artificial cataclysm to be propagated between worlds than to have it occur on one world. This makes colonizing (and ideally terraforming) multiple worlds desirable for the long-term survival of our species.
This doesn't mean we have to devote all possible resources to it; just that it's a good thing to do at some point, and a nice long-term goal to shoot for.
Face it, we are trapped in our own solar system. Pioneer 10 has been travelling for thirty years, and is less than 0.03% of the way to the closest star. It should arrive in a little over 9000 years from now. The only two technologies that can get us away, are hibernation, and multi-generation craft. Are we going to put a couple of hundred people onto one of these spaceships and wait around for 9-10 thousand years to see if they find a habitable planet? No, we're stuck here.
First of all, we'd have picked out destination worlds and verified their ability to support life long before sending colonization craft. The cost of building a big enough telescope is far lower than the cost of building an interstellar colony ship.
Secondly, several approaches to building interstellar craft that don't carry their own power sources with them have been proposed. These would allow interstellar craft to reach their destinations within a human lifetime, if we're in that much of a hurry.
Heck, you can in principle do it with a big enough and efficient enough fusion craft (smallest mass ratio you can do it in is about 100:1, but even 1000:1 could be built, albeit expensively).
Assuming less design optimization or smaller craft gives a longer travel time, but I don't see why this is intrinsically unacceptable. Fully colonizing a world will take a comparable amount of time (generations). Terraforming a world (as is desirable if the world is to support human life indefinitely) will take at least that long.
Interstellar colonization is desirable from a species point of view for two reasons. Firstly, there are some classes of catastrophe that can sterilize entire star systems (nearby supernovae are the most popular so far). Spreading between stars, even slowly, would put colonies out of range of such catastrophes in a time much shorter than their expected interval of occurrence, and so is a suitable long-term safeguard. More importantly, launching an interstellar war is possible, and arguably reasonably practical. Launching a slower-than-light interstellar war without some magical new physics making things a lot cheaper is far less practical. Interstellar colonization would give us very good protection against most conceivable species-destroying catastrophes, either natural or artificial.
Thus, as a long-term goal, I believe colonization both in-system and out-of-system is desirable.
simple question: why building a powerplant there?
did them alienz run outta power too? did the usa power grid shutdown even shut down their grid too?
is the alien power grid interconnected with them usa? usa folks are alienz?
what the fuck? this is ridiculous.
-----
other explanation: now we are about to pollute another planet.
first earth, then moon (lunar vehicles, atomic reactors), and then the mars?
why does humans always pollute all their environment, no matter where.
what about safety standards and so forth, who guarantees that we wont be lazy with safety and environment protection on mars.
so far noone lives there or actully needs mars (as far as official public knowledge is being presented, but who knows, maybe nasa and super secret usa folks already took over mars and all those fantastic conspiracy theories and shit...)
but what if something goes wrong with the reactor or whatever other accidents and pollution, radiation and stuff.
will humans ever grow up and start to make a better world for everbody?
do u think you will ever get rid of GWB again?
think again!
An earlier comment mentioned how putting people on Mars would be useless, because they would live in a dome. There have been many comments by NASA stating that terraforming Mars will eventually happen. True, it may not be for another 100 years, but it will be a VERY important step for humanity. And what better way to run the greenhouses needed, than with a nuclear power plant? Or any power plant, for that matter...
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I think it's odd that they mentioned radiation as an issue, but not hypersonic winds. I haven't seen anyone adequately address this yet.
They want to show that they have something to come with on a possible future international mission to mars. They can't contribute with money so they have to show technology instead.
You couldn't be closer to the truth. How much money did the US spend on developing zero-gravity ballpoint pens and electric shavers, while the russians used pencils, and shaving cream/foam and an ordinary razor. The high-tech solution is not always the best.
as far as i can tell.. they are just trying to make doom3 a reality.. good for them. hope those later research missions do some 'experiments on the very fabric of reality, and beyond'
Yep. The Russians are *way* better than U.S., so long as you choose to believe myth over fact.
Btw, when the reactor blew-up, their Unified Energy Grid did not even cough. The town itself and the rest of the region did not experience a powerdown.
For the /.ers not familiar with space topics...
The Russians have been for about 3-4 years now engaged in running a space program by press release, this is about the 20th over that timeframe. All of them brave, all of them bold, all of them having a snowballs chance.
Russia is trying desperately to convince the world that they are still a first rate nation.
Yes, they did. The first one was put there by Armstrong and Aldrin, so it was available from day one...
Some interesting results over the years:
"Ranging has also determined that the length of an Earth day has distinct small-scale variations of about one thousandth of a second over the course of a year, caused by the atmosphere, tides, and Earth's core. In addition, precise positions of the laser ranging observatories on Earth are slowly drifting as the crustal plates on Earth drift. The observatory on Maui is seen to be drifting away from the observatory in Texas."
karma capped
Thanks for playing, you luddite.
... welcome our new radioactive super-powered mutant martian overlords.
And while there the astronautes can keep busy by playing Duke Nukem: Forever! Sign me up!
Afterall their own track record in Russia is not all that pretty. To me, there is something wrong with getting pollution in place and running right away on mars.
I would rather somebody plant something that can handle the environment. --On second thought, with no competetors, that could be a bad thing...
Blogging because I can...
I love the way the BBC says:
The only stumbling block is how to deliver ready-made building blocks to a construction site 300 million kilometres (186.4 million miles) away from Earth.
This really would be a wonderful project, but you have to doubt that the Russians are in any position to take this one on.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
Must keep up with the 'we plan to' Jones's.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
in-sigh-te-phul.
mod parent up. thank you.
Mars will now have a more reliable power grid than the eastern seaboard...thanks to the RUSSIANS, of all people!
Let's hope they don't outsource any of the components to Ohio.
It seems extremely conservative to me that Russia would take 30 years to get to Mars, especially considering their stated plan is to build a reactor - they'll get to Mars faster if the reactor is in fact what gets them to Mars in the first place.
The U.S. has had a working nuclear rocket engine for forty years, according to a PDF on the ROVER/Nerva project off this page. These are relatively simple engines which shoot hydrogen out the back.
Of course the reference to "already built" is bizarre, who cares if it is already built if they are going to take 30 years to do it? No reason to mention that unless maybe they are talking about tested submarine reactors.
Of course the U.S. has a deal according to this March 2003 article to get Russian nuclear rocket fuels for the nuclear rocket program of Project Prometheus through 2009.
This pdf says that using the NERVA rockets of the 1970s we could get to the moon in a day, or to Mars in 4 months. The article by a Los Alamos researcher is interesting as it talks about the social problems versus technical problems. In all it seems that the nuclear rocket costs half as much, is twice as powerful, and is safe (at least from this paper it seems that reactor core products stay in the reactor). Also from about page 21 there is an interesting section on radiation and human exploration.
It talks about using a gas core nuclear rocket (GCNR) in which we are talking about how to shield crew from radiation in flight, not on the ground, but that this will mean we can get to and from Mars in much less than NASA's planned (1998) mission of 3 years. With a specific impulse of over 3000 seconds, a GCNR ship can have a 3 month transit to Mars, 2 months on the planet, and 4 months back - thus reducing psychological stress factors by keeping the mission to 6-7 months' duration.
There is also the physical deterioration from a long flight.. Apparently the current U.S.-Russia program is aiming for even better, perhaps 2 months each way using small reactors for an unlimited fuel supply and three times better propulsion.
More info:
link
link
link
pro-nuclear space space group with more information
What about that entire "attempt no landings there" thing? .. or am I remembering a movie again.
damn.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I always imagined we would build our first base on the moon before we started to colonise the other planets. Why build on Mars instead of the moon? The moon is probably cheaper and safer to build on as well.
So... you've singlehandedly discovered the two and ONLY two methods for long distance human space travel? Sheesh... they should give you that science prize they give out every year... or whatever.
If humans have figured out how to surpass the speed of sound without liquifying themselves, how to travel in space while breathing at the same time, how to send messages invisibly through the air, and how to produce instant burritos, then humans are going to figure out a way around the problems of distance and time. Portable wormholes, warp drives, hyperspace, or something cool. There was a time when it took weeks or months(or more) to cross a continent; now such trips take less than a day. As Flash Gordon as it sounds, such will also one day be true of trips to distant stars. Judging an endeavor's success or failure on a thirty year old experiment is not something one can do out of hand in this day and age.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Vote Arnold Swarzenegger for leader of Mars in 2030!
-]Phreak Out[-
I think that just because you do not hear about the protests outside the US does not mean they do not happen ( and in large numbers ), from eco-warriors trying to stop motorways in the UK, to greenpeace and others trying to stop transport of nuclear material in Germany, France and the UK, to protests in India about the central government (with aid from the WorldBank and others) trying to build huge dams.
This kind of news does not generally make it into the "foreign" pages of newspapers or the corporate media as these are in general against the ideoligy of the owners of the media ( especially in the US ) and deemed less interested than scandal about the lastest starlet or teen idol.
This is weird. I just surprised myself when my first reaction to this was a very deep sadness, because I will be in the waning years of my life when this happens and will never live to see any of my children or grand-children go to another planet.
I think I need some more coffee.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
For all those who don't understand the above, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a book called Red Mars , which is about the colonization of Mars. Even world famous author Arthur C. Clarke says: "The best book on the colonization of mars that has ever been written..." (The quote is on the cover). There are two books that follow up on Red Mars, namely, Blue Mars , and Green Mars.
No, Chernobyl was not "all about location," although you'd hope that the mistake of putting a nuclear reactor on a fault line wouldn't be made twice. The problem was with the design of the RBMK (?) reactor, which was unstable in low power conditions like the ones immediately leading up to the disaster. The very safe ones which have been built more recently in Europe are designed to fail safe. So, if you do something silly with your pressurised water reactor and lose all of the coolant the reaction stops, rather than "doing a Chernobyl."
I'm sorry, but for $20 Billion you could have your moon base, but that's a long way from eliminating all extreme poverty in the world, because there's so many things you need to do to achieve that.
"Everybody here at Fantasticorp is very excited by the move," explains Public Relations Bunny, Natasha Russki. "From Fearless Leader all the way down to our enforced government investors, we are all very excited! --The only employees who seem to have any problem with the plan are in the engineering corps. But they're a rather dour lot."
Fantasticorp's 2001 announcement to build an Ice Cream Factory on Io was not forgotten by the public as expected, forcing the corporate giant to consider recycling much of its R&D and engineering staff by the fall of this year.
"It's unfortunate that the public had such a long memory, so now we actually have to invest time and money in that dull, old project," pouts Natasha. "So we're planning instead to expose employee corruption as the source of failure for the Io plan and hire an all new staff, invigorating our team with new life and energy! We're all very excited!"
Fantasticorp later admitted that certain employees had been let go and may face charges due to collusion with Chinese industrial spies in the Io Ice Cream Confectionary scandal. "Anyway, we're much better than the Chinese." assured Natasha. "Their Asteroid Belt Animal Kingdom Project is doomed to failure."
-FL
IMHO this is the better way to do it. We send a few people to Mars to build the thing. They know they aren't coming back -- what they get instead is the chance to make history. We get a nuke plant somewhere where nobody is going to get too badly hurt if it blows up. In the worst possible case, we get half a dozen dead bodies on Mars. Big deal. Fags kill more than that - 120 000 a year in this country alone, that's one every 4'23". And don't even mention nuclear pollution. Remember this is space we're talking about. Space is full of radiation. Our planet just has an atmosphere that blocks most of it -- otherwise we would have groun up differently :-) Detonating a nuclear bomb in space would pollute it about as much as one drop of urine would pollute the ocean.
Somebody mentioned fire. Easy solution: don't leave oxidising substances {like, er, oxygen} lying around all over the place. Difficult on Earth with an oxygen-rich atmosphere; easy when all your oxygen has to be piped in from somewhere. {Probably obtained by splitting some oxide or other, using energy from the nuclear plant. Human beings produce plenty of CO2 and H2O. Take one person's entire daily output of oxides, separate the oxygen out and you've got exactly one day's oxygen ration.}
And stop with the doomsday scenarios already. Entertaining the concept of failure is coming too close to failure for my liking.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
At least someone in Russia is thinking of interesting projects to do, even if they can no longer afford them.
Chernobyl (Czarnobyl) was at first (12th century) in Kiev Duchy; since 14th century is was Lithuanian property. Later it was part of Polish-Lithuanian union, later - under Russian occupation. Between WW1 and WW2 it was Polish again; after WW2 - Soviet and now - Ukrainian.
In short: Chernobyl estates belonged to Chodkiewicz aristocratic family since mid-18th century. Let's move to 1986, Poland, Warsaw University. Few days after explosions history students turned to their professor, who had aristocratic origin; and his family had had estates not far from Chernobyl before WW2.
They told him "Professor, there was exlosion in nuclear plant at Chernobyl". He replied:
"At Chernobyl? That are Chodkiewicz family estates, there had been always a mess".
Wow, I too was thinking of building a nuclear power plant on mars.
And, just like Russia, I'M TOO FSCKING POOR TO DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN FEED MYSELF!
But it's nice to dream.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I wonder how many celebrity rocket rides it will take to fund this venture.
an ill wind that blows no good
Now all we need is some good power lines to Earth.
no idea.
27 years is a good goal I guess, but don't the Russians have to figure out how to land something first without crash-landing it?
UMD runs a 250 kW reactor that runs on (what is today considered) nuclear waste.
Very clean, IMPOSSIBLE to produce weapons grade material from it or its fuel, and provides a solution (actually a use) for today's nuclear waste.
http://www.caesar.umd.edu/
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
How the heck do they think they are going to finish by 2030??
I see a few problems:
1. We've never been to mars. Maybe we should walk on the thing before we build a nuke plant. There are more than a few stumbling blocks to sending a human to mars...let's prove we can surmount those before we go build a freaking nuclear plant.
2. How big is this thing going to be? I doubt that we can get the parts there in two seperate flights. (umanned beagle type thing, and manned flight)
You know this thing won't finish on time. They'll forget a screw driver or something and *boom*....the project is behind 7 years.
clifgriffin > blog
I'll believe it when I see it. I'm guess that in 2030 we'll still be trying to figure out what to do with the shuttle, and Russia will still be using the same old Soyuz crafts that their bankrupt nation has used since the late 60's / early 70's.
-Cnik
Criminys, that's a silly idea. Mars? You'd need the mother of all extension cords to get the power back here. Anything that long and thick would be a tremendous trip-hazard anyway. Do you really want to send some poor UFO on a header?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
This is falmebait and I will treat it as such...
You're an ignorant ass.
Why is there this big rush all of a sudden to put people on Mars. I'd love to see it in my lifetime but isn't the moon more realistic? Prove that the technology works and that people don't go stir crazy living under a dome first. If there are problems, rescue could be a few days away instead of months. Higher probability that if something catestrophic does happen, the inhabitants can be rescued.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Russian scientists plan to test the feasibility of the idea by first sending a reactor to the United States. The Russian Mission Chief, Dr. Kissoff, said "We are aware that there is a similar lack of power sources in the NE United States and we would need to address this issue if we wish to make habitation possible."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
In a related story, the Russians also annouced they would exceed the speed of light, complete the Grand Unified Theory of physics, and find the last digit of Pi.
If only we could connect it to the grid.
That poor dog :-( A six month trip to Mars with not return ticket. I wonder what PETA thinks of this.
.. of NUCLEAR power station on Mars, with very little clouds and a planet-sized desert to cover with solar arrays?? Nevermind that mars gets half the solar radiation of Earth, there is room for a bigger array. Also solar cells can probably be easily fabricated on spot, from local raw materials, by robots and also installed by robots.
:P
On the other hand, trying to figure out how to haul a multithousand ton nuclear powerstation to Mars could give a real kick to space technology
I, for one, welcome our new scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, algae-eating overlords.
From the same article:
"The radiation environment on the surface of Mars is unknown but probably poses a similar risk, even though the planet's tenuous atmosphere would provide some shielding."
Also...
"The radiation would expose astronauts in orbit to an effective dose 2.5 times greater than that received by humans in low Earth orbit aboard the international space station, Zeitlin said."
It ain't exactly a 20MT nuclear blast, ya know. Proper lead sheilding would do the trick.
Sheesh.
Does anyone read these fucking things anymore?
In Soviet Russia, planet colonizes you!
They already have a working prototype!
Man, those are going to be some LONG hydro wires!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Wait until the construction opens up the teleportal to hell, allowing a flood of monsters to kill everyone on the base. Then some poor SOB marine will have to be sent up there to clean out the monsters.
1. Throw a copy of chernobyl specs together.
2. Ship it to Mars.
3. ???
4. Power!
In Soviet Russia, you dont lauch the rocket, the rocket launches YOU!
Russia is essentially bankrupt. Are they going to funnel their off-the-books oil profits into this project? Russia held great promise, but they've laggered ever since the Communist regime collapsed. There was a time in the mid 90s that the Russian government threatened to destroy the DeBeers diamond monopoly by selling their enormous diamond reserves on the open market outside the control of DeBeers; but apparently DeBeers and others paid off people and this threat never materialized. Russia relies on the minute foreign aid the U.S. and other Western countries give them, and they still don't seem to have enough currency to fund their space program without selling seats to people like Dennis Tito. Where is their manufacturing base? I can foresee China being able to pay for things like this (in 30 years if they'd stop wasting money building up their military to threaten Taiwan) since it seems like China has become the world's manufacturing base, as well as the country most open to genetic (stem cell research) engineering because of the lack of Christian or Muslim fundamentalists there precluding such activities. Now compare that to the United States. We could pay for such programs if there was a political will. We can run large deficits as long as we have foreign investment and keep our interest rates low. We can do that as long as there isn't a viable competing superpower. The euro has become a serious competitor against the Dollar, but until the European Union *member states* (I'd rather refer to them as *Sovereign Nation States*) tackle structural reform(s) (especially their pension system not to mention their generous unemployment benefits and strict hiring/layoff rules), their economy is not going to surpass the United States. However, if the EU was/were smart, they'd essentially assume control of Russia and use Russia's raw materials to build itself into the friendly competing superpower to the United States...and then finally we all might find the impetus to devote some serious resources to space exploration/settlement instead of fighting for diminishing natural resources of this planet...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
good for them! better for us, we don't have to do the work
I've heard of avoiding NIMBY, but that's just ridiculous.
Why don't they just use the one that the aliens left there thousands of years before? Sheesh.
Really, why bother shlepping a nuclear plant all way to Mars? And then there's the fuel - do they plan on mining uranium there, too? If it even exists there? If not, then there's the additional, continuing cost of shipping the fuel. "Self-sufficient"? I this is an idiotic idea. I suppose the Mayflower settlers needed shipments of firewood from England, too.
What about solar? Mars has minimal cloud cover. Sure, there are the occasional planet-wide dust storms, but those only seem to occur every decade or so, and only last a few weeks. How much power could we expect to receive from sunlight on Mars? Well, the insolation here on Earth is 1370 watts per square meter. Mars is in an elliptical orbit, so its distance from the sun varies from about 1.35 to 1.70 times Earth's distance from the sun. So, at a minimum, we can expect about 475 watts per square meter on Mars. Today's hardened solar cells rated for space-based use have an efficiency of about 26%, so even today (never mind in 2030), you can get a minimum of 123 watts per square meter on Mars. I imagine that for the cost of building, shipping and assmbling a nuclear plant for Mars, you could send a square kilometer of solar cells, and generate over a hundred megawatts, FOR FREE!
AFter the ISS I'm not too keen on international cooperation to get big projects done.
Whatever MIR was, it was lot more than any U.S. space station has been.
It also outlived its planned life (as well as that of any U.S. junk that has ever been up there) by three times.
Let's talk about those myths again after you manage to keep even an excercise in shade-tree mechanism not only orbiting but manned and conducting scientific studies for fifteen years.
of course, this plan never got very far, but NASA was shortly considering a giant mirror all the way around the planet, which would focus heat on the poles to terraform the planet. 'dirty' power plants was another option. i guess russia's more open to that idea (surprise)
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If the russians have learned from the past at all, they will build it in some remote, dark crater not unlike the Ukraine... Better make that 'biological shield' a few meters thicker.
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I thought these people owned Mars.
Half of MIR was paid for and delivered by the US, and almost half it's total life on orbit depended on the Shuttle. You read that correctly, without the US, MIR would have been far less capable, and would have been abandoned years before it was.
Some super spacemen the Russians eh?
Since the Russians didn't do as you claim... I guess we can talk about the myths now.
You do know that MIR generated very little science during the latter half of it's service life? (Over 75% of the crews time was spent on maintenance.) Furthermore, the majority of the 'science' they did was poorly documented and lacked normal scientific controls. MIR was also a poor platform for science to start with. It did not have controlled microgravity. It's had unreliable power supplies. And it's enviromental regulation capability was (far)less than optimal.
You do know that MIR almost killed it's crew on multiple occasions, and the Russians covered up these incidents?
You do know that MIR almost had to be abandonded multiple times because of complete system failures?
In short, MIR was wonderful only to those that are impressed by buzz and spin.
CHERNOBYL
Using nuclear drives in space can be done right now, not 30 years off. The only reason we don't do it is politics. Actually, last year Pres. Bush opened a very nice hole to possibly allow their use. In my Sr. Design class in college we had nuclear drives on the mars mission. The technology is there; the money to do it is there (it's relatively inexpensive); the political backing is not. Zubrin (crackpot or not, your call) even had a design for one in his book 5 years ago.
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It seems to me it would make sense to build an orbiting space station above Mars first before trying to establish a base on the planetary surface. Sending a probe or any supplies to Mars from Earth currently would waste a lot of fuel escaping Earth and then having to propel itself to Mars, then enter the atmosphere, and have some form of propulsion to get it back off Mars and back to Earth. Probes should be sent to Space Station Freedom from Earth, then to the Martian Space Station, and then down to the surface. If a crew is sent to Mars and they need to leave the surface quickly, they could return to the Martian space station for any medical or supply needs in a more timely manner than sending them back on the long trek back to the homeworld. And no, I did not watch "Red Planet" or "Mission to Mars" too many times before posting this message today either...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The CAESAR experiment piggy backs on UMD's 255 kW Triga reactor.
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An Orion does not make for a cheap space program. Sure, the craft itself is cheap. But then you have to add in the cost of what it does to the launch site and everything in the vacinity.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
In which case, I don't care what the people back here on earth think. I'm going to have a wonderful time in space. Besides, Pioneer 10 moves like pond-water compared to what we're capable of doing even now.
Altruism and survival of the species is the kind of stuff scientists and enthusiasts put out to generate interest in space exploration. Me, I'm going out in space because it'll be so cool it'll blow my socks off.
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An Orion does not make for a cheap space program. Sure, the craft itself is cheap. But then you have to add in the cost of what it does to the launch site and everything in the vacinity.
Just launch it from some piece of ice at the (ant)arctics, and you're left with just the cost of transportation to the launch site.
And don't forget: Orion is proposed to scale up better than down, so that:
1) you eventually need less launches, so less sites.
2) mass-transit causes cost-per-kilo of transportation to launch site to drop significantly.
The real long-term cost is fission-ash stuck in magnetosphere and eventually returning to earth.
This, IMHO, is the real, long-term cost, which should be weighted against environmental benefits from such a cheap access method to space: such as clean energy from SPS
Working for necessity's mother.
They can build a nuclear power station any way they please: no inspectors and no protests from local residents who do not want it near them.
Well, I think you're reaching the limits of our current economic system here. Instead of thinking in dollars, think in terms of raw material resources and human labor available. Is it possible to build a moon-base given our current technology, available materials, and expendable labor. I.e. can we support those people's needs without them having to work to provide food, shelter, etc.?
I think the answer is "yes", we could build a moon-base. But probably not given our current economic system. Mainly because we've abstracted the the resources I listed above too much. We'd look at the cost in dollar terms instead of resource availability and say it's too expensive.
Incidentally, I think the answer to eliminating poverty is "no". It's not an issue of resource availability, but of distribution of those resources. But I guess you could say that about a lot of things.
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They would have the technology for sure. Miniature satellite nuclear plants and whatnot. Ditto for getting stuff into orbit. But for building a spaceship capable of sustaining a crew for however long it's going to take to get that reactor to Mars, set up a polar ice to water-oxygen plant plus a few other sundries..
On the other hand, they've got enormous pile of nukes and bomb-grade material so maybe they're going to build a nuclear impulse ship..
1) you eventually need less launches, so less sites.
Just because you CAN launch a large payload doesn't mean you always need to. A successful vehicle design has to scale down to where it is efficient even when launching a small satellite. (Maybe not with the same physical vehicle, but at least with a smaller version of the same kind of vehicle, like the difference between a 18-wheel truck and a moped, both based on the same kind of engine - internal combustion using gasoline. You can't make an orion that's efficient for small loads.) You can't just batch together a bunch of satellite launches into one orion flight either, since such launches need to establish totally different tragectories from each other, they each need their own seperate vehicle launched on different paths.
An orion would be a great spaceship design for use OUTSIDE an atmosphere, because then you don't get fallout drifting far away, but unfortunately it's here on Earth that we need it's high thrust ratio the most. I agree that it could be possible to find a large enough patch of area that the area demolished by the launch won't contain any inhabitants or anything we mind destroying. But take into account atmosphere (and the water circulation cycle of rain-runoff-ocean-evaporate), and there's nowhere safe to launch from, not even the ice caps. (Imagine how much ice would melt an d end up in the oceans. Even if you discount the radiation danger of that (I don't know the science so I don't know how much of a danger that would really be), there's still the fact that you can't have repeat missions on "ground" that melts away a large part of itself each time you use it. Each launch would have to be in a new location.) Once we reach earth orbit we don't need the orion's massive thrust capacity anymore to get around the solar system. Slow-but-steady drive designs can do that job just fine. So Orions aren't a viable solution to build a space program on. There's nowhere safe to repeatedly launch them from here on Earth. We could handle a small number of launches, but not a regular frequent schedule of them.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
A successful vehicle design has to scale down to where it is efficient even when launching a small satellite.
... I think the arctic won't even notice it...
,perhaps even hundred of thousands of people would be launched to live and work in space. One where space is no longer a curiosity or a millioner's toy. One that will enable the survival of the human race.
why ? these are the tool's parameters, work with them. Orion is the best high-thrust high-isp combination currently proposed (AFAIK). If anyone has a better design, great, if not, that's the way to go.
You can't just batch together a bunch of satellite launches into one orion flight either, since such launches need to establish totally different tragectories from each other
That is untrue. Not only you can, it is the most efficient method, since once out of atmosphere, an unmanned vehicle only needs high isp, not high thrust (like you said). So you can launch 20 sat. together with an Orion, and use low thrust high-isp engines (either for each, or on a transport craft) to change the orbits' parameters for each sat.
An orion would be a great spaceship design for use OUTSIDE an atmosphere, because then you don't get fallout drifting far away, but unfortunately it's here on Earth that we need it's high thrust ratio the most
Again, agreed,except it's "magnetosphere", not atmosphere.
But take into account atmosphere (and the water circulation cycle of rain-runoff-ocean-evaporate), and there's nowhere safe to launch from, not even the ice caps. (Imagine how much ice would melt an d end up in the oceans. Even if you discount the radiation danger of that (I don't know the science so I don't know how much of a danger that would really be), there's still the fact that you can't have repeat missions on "ground" that melts away a large part of itself each time you use it. Each launch would have to be in a new location.)
No, that doesn't add up at all. The explosions near the ground are supposed to be small (~20 kilotonnes each). Suppose that you melt even a megaton's worth of ice. That's 10^10 calories which melts and evaporates ~10^8 gr = 100 m^3 of ice
As for the ground, you just wait until it freezes over. Let's say, at the most, until next winter.
So Orions aren't a viable solution to build a space program on
Not a viable solution for a space program in it's current, limited form, I agree. But a much better space program could be built using Orions. One where tens of thousands,
IMHO, such a program is the most important endeavour humanity should take in this century.
Working for necessity's mother.
How are those atom lasers coming along they keep talking about to be able to print superconductors. Build a REALLY BIG one and perhaps you could print a city on Mars.
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Not a viable solution for a space program in it's current, limited form, I agree. But a much better space program could be built using Orions. One where tens of thousands,
You can't get there from here. You can't suddenly make one giant leap from having no inhabitants in space to suddenly having 50,000 people all launched up at once without any infrastructure for them to go to.
And no, waiting for the ground to refreeze isn't a solution. The fact that the launch ruins the launch site means you can't have the infrastructure built there to support the launch. A mission of 50,000 people will take time to organize, time to assemble everything at the launch site, time to build essentially a factory at the launch site to build the large vehicle (since nothing could transport the thing in one piece), time to build up the small city that will appear around the launch site to support the time leading up to it, and all of that goes away after one single launch. Even if it's not a large amount of ice compared to the entire arctic, it's a huge amount of effort to build the support infractructure at the launch site, and it all goes away.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
If you and new foreign students get the same grades at an american college, doesn't that prove that they are SMARTER than you if they have comparable grades while understanding much less English than you?
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