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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."
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.
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.
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.
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)
If you give up on manned space travel, then you'll never develop the experience or technology necessary to make it easier and safer. It's not as if NASA could be researching better satellite technology and then *poof* the next generation of the space shuttle will appear.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
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.
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!
Oh, in that case then, if its going to be a union, this should be finished by 3000.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
I can't help but think since it costs $500 million to send a small probe to Mars...that it will cost several times that to sent things like fuel rods (which are very, very heavy) and containment structures to mars. I don't know what their design is, though...maybe RadioThermal or something? Because a full-on steam reactor costs billions to build on Earth, let alone on Mars. And, like the parent says...for what?
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.
Dangerous? What worthwhile thing isn't! There's many who are willing to go despite the risks. A weak-stomached public shouldn't stand in the way.
My guess is that they'd want to build a reactor which is basically a bucket for billiar-ball sized spheres containing (among others) tiny pellets of U-235 and carbon.
Apparently, this design is extremely safe, and it looks quite scalable to me too.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I respectfully disagree. Sure, it's dangerous, but how many of the Mars probes that we've lost would've been had we had (wo)men on them? Sure, they'd cost more and take longer to develop, but I bed we'd learn a whole lot more in the process.
This is one of my favorite quotes (and email sigs), from one in the biz (granted, some time ago, but I think the quote is no less relevant now than back then...and will be for some time).
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard
a spacecraft... and the only one that can
be mass produced with unskilled labor."
--Wernher von Braun
--- Standard disclaimer applies.
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.
.
Depends how you define 'literate', would it not, comrade? I happen to have spoken with a lot of Russians who told me that basically the education system there was super slack so that anyone can get bachelor's degrees, in order to pump up the numbers.
This doesn't mean all Russians engineers suck or whatever, they have the same cross-section of humanity as anyone else, idiots to geniuses. But their social system fudged a lot of numbers.
The current generation of spaceflight has no hope for mass emmigration from earth. In fact, the amount that it would cost to build a viable moonbase for a hundred people would probably be enough to eliminate all extreme poverty on earth.
The technology that may enable mankind to really "reach the stars" is still decades, if not centuries away. Sure, there have been some interesting developments resulting from manned space-flight. But things like modularized space stations aren't extremely helpful when spacecraft are built by nanobots.
No matter how much science fiction you read, sending people into space simply isn't worth the effort at this point in time. Yes, there are lessons that can be learned by manned exploration. But I don't know whether those lessons are going to be worth the tens of billions of dollars that they will cost.
There's more to things than just how much they cost; there's the benefit that society gets for that cost. Right now, that benefit isn't enough.
Lots of would-be aviators got themselves killed in unproven flying (or non-flying) contraptions before the Wright brothers got their plane off the ground. Plenty more were killed trying to punch through the "sound barrier" before Chuck Yeager succeeded. Any kind of experimental or exploratory mission is fraught with risk. Those who engage in such activities are aware of the risks, and choose to take them anyway because they know something good will come out of it either way (you learn as much from your failures as from your successes). That some of them end up dead is unfortunate, but the consequences if nobody did what they do would be far worse.
If we took your advice, it'd still take days or weeks to get from the US to Europe or Asia, instead of hours. You probably wouldn't be reading this message either, as neither of us would have computers on our desktops linked by a global communications network. I'm sure there are more examples, but those are just the ones that come to mind right now.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
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.
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.
Pardon?
Protests as a demonstration of public sentiment are near-universal. Protests for progressive issues would seem in recent times to be much larger and more frequent in most other industrialised democracies compared to the US.
OK, you may have been talking just about Russia, but the world does not divide up into Russia and the USA anymore!
Maybe i'm missing something here, but this nuclear station will "only" need six engineers to run it, and is proposed for use by other cosmonauts in future mars expeditions.
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?
In practice, they don't have to. All that has to happen is for _anyone_ to have manned missions to Mars 30 years from now.
When the US, or Europe, or Japan, or China starts thinking seriously about a Mars base, they can step up with a power solution already in-hand. The design studies for a space project take at least as long as the project itself, so this is of considerable worth.
It's moot point, though, as this sounds more like a feasibility study done by a research institution than anything that they actually plan to build. Much like the current crop of space elevator proposals, or the large space station proposals of a few decades ago.
The "we're planning to do this" line is almost certainly spin from the reporting agency or someone higher up the political food chain.
Still makes for interesting reading.
Thinking like this would have kept the explorers of our history at home. Hillary would never have climbed Everest, Magellan's Voyage (though he didn't survive it) would never have happened, Polynesia would be blissfully free of humans, since getting there in a canoe takes a damn large leap of faith, and the Americas would be an animal wilderness.
In fact, there would still just be a few thousand of us wandering around a valley somewhere in eastern Africa picking at grubs and nuts.
Of course, depending on your perspective, this may be good or bad. Personally, I prefer my current state to that possibility.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
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.
Your correct from a point of view. For the billions here now and to come in the future the majority of their destinations are irrevocably linked to the earth. However the fate of humanity is linked to our decision regarding that 'dead end'. If we stay here Humanities days are numbered. Be it an asteroid, Be it going past the carrying capacity and poisioning the world irrevocably or be it the sun running out of its fuel. The days are numbered. There is most likely a whole crap load of them, possibly billions upon billions. But numbered all the same.
The only way to change that is to increase the number of places where we can live independantly. I agree the ocean is an untapped frontier that we will sooner or later explore. I have long held we will go down before we truly go up and still hold to it. However we still must leave. First to the rest of the solar system if for no other reason than to lessen our weakness in living on only one planet, and then beyond. Do not think in terms of evacuating the earth but in terms of the destiny of humanity as a whole. This is our home and will remain so forever, unfortunately it will not last forever. So if humanity does not exist elsewhere we will only know it as our home as long as it can support us. If Humanity expands beyond the realm of earth it can outlive the earth, if it expands beyond the solar system it can outlive the solar system and on and on. In my mind that is a worthy goal and most certainly not a 'dead end'.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
The Russians should build an Encapsulated Nuclear Heat Source instead http://coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/1002/reactor.html
But to address, the PBMR issues...
A graphite fire is not a significant risk in a PBMR since helium is used as a coolant. Ever try to burn stuff in helium? Furthermore, air/water ingress scenarios will be very low probability events. Yes, you could dream up such scenarios, but then you have also have to work yourself into a panic about large meteors striking the earth.
There is some debate on the flammability of nuclear-grade graphite used in PBMR fuel. Similar grades of graphite are used on space shuttle tiles and I bet the astronauts would be really pissed if those things burned - they might fall off, but that's a problem with the mechanical connection between the tile and the shuttle.
The PBMR does produce more waste BY VOLUME given the graphite matrix that surrounds the fuel. However, the PBMR is designed for higher burnup fuel so the amount of long-lived radioactive "waste" will be reduced. Furthermore, PBMR fuel may be easier to dispose of given the decomposition resistant graphite layers and the lower density of decay heat (you have to space out spent fuel in a repository to manage the heat loads anyways).
Why would you have to dispose of the helium coolant? It doesn't become radioactive.
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
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."
Nice try. The principle driving force behind the colonization of North America was to get natural resources. Initially, it was the search for a route to India to get spices. Later it was driven by the fur trade, lumber, fish, and sugar (oh, and the fabled cities of gold). Overcrowding and pollution were not issues.
Where is the driving force for a colony on Mars, or on the Moon? It's not economics. We can get whatever is there from here more cheaply. Protection from cataclysm? That would rank, like, #342 in the top ten reasons to do it. Science? Maybe. However, unmanned probes and robots can do the same job, at a far smaller cost. Because it's there? Because it is a test of the human spirit? Erm... Um... Okay, maybe.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see it happen, but...
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
This project is so unfeasible right now that its funny to me that people are arguing over details like this. No one (US and Russia) has clear plans on how to get a single human being to Mars and back, forget building a nuclear power plant. I think they are jumping the gun on this one. Lets build better and cheaper space vehicles before we start colonizing other planets.
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