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Clean Nuclear Launches?
AKAImBatman writes "When it comes to launching millions of pounds of material into space, nearly everyone knows about the Orion Project. Blow up a series of nuclear bombs under your dairy-aire and ride the explosion on up. Unfortunately, the Orion spewed out so much radiation that it just wasn't a feasible launch option. If we want commuter trips to space, we're going to have to find another way. Well, it turns out that NASA's been doing quite a bit of research on Gas Core Nuclear Rockets, an ultra-powerful nuclear rocket that puts out almost no radiation. This research has spurred a fascinating new generation of ideas on reaching the cosmos. Could inexpensive cruises to the moon happen within our lifetimes?"
Space Elevator. Everything else is too dangerous and expensive.
One of the biggest problems with anything Nulcear, be it power, subs, or rockets, there is a very negative public perception. You can tell people that it is safe all you want but there will always be that paranoia. It doesn't help that people don't neccesarily trust the government.
A few years back, I remember there being some amazingly loud protests from some anti-nuclear power folks about the dangers of a deep space probe going up with a nuclear power source. Those folks were worried about the danger if the rocket blew up on the pad or the 1 in 100,000 or so chance the probe would hit the earth on one of its acceleration orbits.
Just imagine how happy these folks will be with a nuclear powered rocket, even if the scientific community claims that they are safe. After all, it's nuclear related, so it's gotta be bad!! (tongue firmly in cheek)
Quick, someone ban the sun.
And stop people from living in Denver or flying on planes or going skiing in the mountains.
And let's not forget xray machines, cathode ray tubes (TVs and computer monitors to you non-engineers).
And what about that deadly substance known as "granite" that releases radioactive radon?
But unfortunately, the space elevator will be so obscenely expensive in terms of resources and labour to get going in the first place that though amortized over a large number of launches, the cost would indeed be low... they probably won't be willing to wait that long to recover their costs, so launches that way would be even more expensive than the methods we use currently.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Google for "B-52" or "Tu-95". It's been done.
Heck, during the era of surface nuclear tests, we detonated dozens of the damn things above ground. Kinda sucked to be immediately downwind. Wasn't the end of the world.
Considering where we're launching the nuclear rockets from, and considering we're designing the reactors in those rockets not to blow up, I'd happily volunteer to ride on a boat anywhere underneath the flight path of any launch vehicle containing a nuclear-powered spacecraft or its components. Hell, I'd volunteer to ride on the launch vehicle.
Define "almost".
Could inexpensive cruises to the moon happen within our lifetimes?"
No.
See, here's the problem:
Nothing is permitted any more without a "business case" being made for it. No document, no invention, no idea, no presentation is countenanced unless it has 20% annual growth and the accountants and the management committee sign off on it.
Since it is impossible to get a bureaucracy to sign off on anything, nothing is permitted at all.
Small businesses and entrepreneurs are starved for capital. Large businesses and management committees have substantial capital, but refuse to invest it. Therefore, there is no capital; or, if there is, it is usually totally inadequate.
Middle management has a perfect series of questions for ideas like this. There is nothing in the world easier than criticizing an idea. Questions like "what do we need that for?" and "yeah, but how do you know it will work?" or "how can you be sure that will sell?" These questions are asked as if an answer is expected. The questions are followed by the comments: "It'll never work," and "sounds expensive" and "why can't we just use $OTHER_IDEA?"
But no answer is expected. The people asking the questions simply want to see how well the "idea person" can ad lib and how many bullshit one-liners and jokes they can reply with. After the middle managers have been entertained, a cocktail party laugh will circle the room, and the idea person will be escorted out of the building and into obscurity as the five-foot-wide-asses return to their bean salads.
As long as this continues, the rate of invention and "innovation" will be reduced to unmeasurably small levels. No vision, idea or invention can surmount well-funded cynicism. Brilliant, well-educated people's minds are being wasted because they report to lying, cheat fuck, greed-driven managers.
Middle management routinely turns its back on paying customers and competition-less markets. How the fuck are they ever going to accept a new "unproven" idea?
They won't.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
My bull meter just pegged.
What the Orion researches choose to research or not research has no effect on what other people choose to research and not research.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Besides, nobody's going to be sending a nuclear rocket into orbit anywhere near me, so I don't mind. Let the Floridians suck it up! They're already addled from all that solar radiation beating down on their pates and overheating their brains - a bit more won't make much difference...
You must think in Russian.
I'm guessing that telling some of the more extreme environmentalist elements that your launch puts out "almost no radiation" isn't going to hack it as far as they're concerned. 1 microrad/hr above background will be reason enough to predict apocalyptic nightmares of mass cancers, food contamination, mutations, dropsy, genital warts, and flatulence. They're essentially anti-technology and will use any excuse to oppose it. Frankly, I'm surprised I can still buy a radium-dial wristwatch.
"Could inexpensive cruises to the moon happen within our lifetimes?"
My hope is that advances in medicine will extend my life to 150+ years so I can see more of these things come to pass.
Somewhere, long, long ago, architects were sitting around talking about this huge, incredible building that would be a real monument to captalism and a center for world trade.
Someone said "wait... what if something smacks into it? If it hit it hard and high enough, the impact could severe the support in the building and bring enough material down fast enough that the rest of the structure would implode. That's a lot of steel and concrete falling an awful long way!"
And someone said "That's a worry for another day. Let's build it first and think about that later."
Ok, so maybe that didn't really happen. But the point remains - you'd need to plan for ANY eventuality. Rogue airplane or stray meteorite, I'm sure there's SOMETHING that could break it.
Of course, as others have mentioned, the whiplike structure of it would either burn up on entry or it would just float to the ground over a wide area (mainly ocean) so it wouldn't be much of a threat.
The point still stands though - it's not a good idea to "think about it later" when you're dealing with something this expensive and important.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Try breaking the cable high enough above the planet that the counterweight exits Earth orbit.
Okay, I can see that being easy.
Now, imagine TIMING such an event so that the counterweight ends up headed right for a lunar base.
I can't see that being easy, though. It depends on an impressive list of things, foremost amongst them is there being a lunar base in any sort of position to be hit by the counterweight. It's not like you can aim; all you can do is time the break.
The people building the elevator and lunar base, on the other hand, CAN aim -- they can choose to move the location of one or the other over by a few feet or miles, and make an impact opportunity vanishingly rare or even impossible.
Of course, they can't do that if they never think of it, so it's good that you and others like you are looking for the loopholes.
-Billy
I haven't heard of this reactor type before, and it is really exciting me right now.
The author of this piece is almost certainly dumbing it down big time, but he makes sense. I don't see any logical inconsistencies or wishful thinking here.
The thing I do understand is the following statement:
" I believe there is a huge pent-up demand for resources in space, and if we could put huge payloads into orbit, uses for those payloads would appear quickly."
Exactly! If weight isn't so all fired important you can build it simpler, faster and cheaper, which lets you build more, which allows economies of scale, which allows research into how to make it better, lighter, stronger, for cheaper... and so on and so forth. Not all feedback loops are bad.
My post doesn't add a whole lot, I know, but this is beyond cool. It may even be possible. Thanks.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I call bullshit.
Source, please. Some relevant links would be nice. If you turn out to be right, I withdraw my bullshit call, but otherwise it stands. I don't recall ever reading anything like this.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Great opportunity to mend ties with the French. They're quite comfortable with nuclear power and if there's any opposition, they could always launch from some radioactive atoll in the South Pacific where they demonstrably don't give a f*ck. Only loss of life will be fish choking on the exhaust of the Rainbow Warrier as they protest about the environmental consequences. Unless of course the French sink them before they get there - again.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
As far as I can see the glass is supposed to not absorb the 80GW of light, yet the hydrogen is. Is the author claiming that silca glass absorbs less photons than hydrogen? If it absorbed only 0.01% of the total photons it would still get 8MW of heat, which is going to be quite hard to keep cool. For comparison, the optics used in cameras absorb 0.1% of the incoming photons.
On the other hand, hydrogen doesn't strike me as particularly absorbent. I thought it was mostly transparent except for a few frequencies (the hydrogen bands). As the gas reactor is acting as a purely blackbody radiator it's going to emit in a classical SB distribution, which will mean that most photons are going to just bounce around until they get absorbed by the mirror or glass.
So the obvious problem to me (and let's face it, I'm not a rocket scientist..) is that you have an 'impedance mismatch' between your energy source and your energy sink.
the article about nuclear powered space travel is bunkum. the author clearly knows very little about his topic as it is riddled with factual errors. He is talking about a land rush on mars - the idea that say half the earth's population would jump into their space ships and go to mars is nonsense! the sheer amount of energy required to do this just is not feasible.
Then he talks about "deltaV" by which he means that in space it costs energy to change your speed rather than maintain your speed. He completely neglects the fact that the biggest limit on acceleration is going to be how much "g force" the human body can tolerate for extended periods, rather than how much fuel or how powerful the rocket/engine is.
He also talks about bringing a large asteroid into earth's orbit for mining. maybe this is feasible, but this would a) alter the moon's relationship to the earth's orbit (question: are 3 body systems as stable as 2 body systems) and b) completely discounts the risk of the asteroid falling to earth, potentially destroying a swathe of the population!
Just like he completely neglects the risk of a large quantity of radioactive material being released into the earth's atmosphere in the case of an accident. He claims that although one of his engines would use the same amount of radioactive material as chinobyl, but 1% of the amount of material as the "ivy mike" nuclear test, then there would not be a problem with radioactive material being released into the atmosphere.
TO THIS DAY, radioactive materials from chernobyl can be detected in sheep which are farmed on hills in Wales. I don't see why this wouldn't be true about other parts of (northern) europe. He is incredibly myopic if he thinks that nuclear space disasters are an acceptable risk.
I could go on, but I shall leave it at this: the author is guilty of wishful thinking, he conveniently ignores major showstoppers, and I can only describe him as a complete buffoon.
God his stupidity makes me angry.
SURELY NOT!!!!!