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Update on Project Prometheus
Aglassis writes "It appears that NASA is not backing down from their nuclear space initiative. Project Prometheus has recently started a new web page (under JPL) and NASA is finishing up a period of public comment (last session today). Currently Northrop Grumman is contracted to begin preliminary design of the spacecraft until 2008 for NASA (the reactor will be built by the Department of Energy's Division of Naval Reactors--the folks who control all US submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear reactors). Early specs are that it will be 60 meters long, have a 30,000 kg mass, use a 100 KW reactor using Brayton cycle gas turbines, be powered by ion thrusters with a 7000 second specific impulse, and have a science payload of 1500 kg. Early mission plans for Prometheus 1 (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) indicate that the spacecraft would orbit Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa individually, and perhaps have a lifespan of about 20 years."
Thats right the Asgard, come and install their own warp engine
So they finally figured out how to stabilize naquandria...
Wow. Am I the only one that thought the JPL must be some license agreement like the GPL, and the wondered why the hell a web page needed to be released with a special license?
Jet Propulsion Labratory
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Hopefully they won't mess up and forget to turn on some really important flag in the kernel, only to discover none of their software is compiled for USB.
Disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist.
I am a rocket scientist, so I can anwser your questions. The key is to find planets rich in dylithium crystals. Or we can negotitate with other civilizations.
Seriously, with everything they will need to carry with them, I hope they find a power source that is plentiful everywhere.
And this is another reason why I hope we start colonizing other planets, building little self containted cities with mines and data reasearch centers. What will happen when the space ship runs out of fuel around pluto and nobody is there to help? I know.... it is all science fiction anyways. But maybe if someone can dream it, someone can build it.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
We don't know what would happen. There is a whole cluster of scientists who believe in SuperString Theory, that we have 10 dimensions but can only percieve 3 of them. Imagine a newspaper comic strip. That character exists in the X and Y plane. What happens if you fire something in Z plane? To him something will appear and disappear quickly. Kinda like how we percieve electrons?? So say we fire off that nuke, and in reality it sends some wave we can't percieve. And that wave hits something else which causes the nuclear action to continue. The whole universe could collapse on itself.
And in those final seconds, I can just hear Bush's voice "Trust me, I know what I'm doing".
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Yeah cool but please don't call till the Agamemnon is launched.
Goofing around aside. This is cool. Dangerous but cool. Let's face it. This will be the mode of propulsion that will take spacecraft around our solar system for many years to come.
What could possibly go wrong?
You obviously missed that chapter. The M$ software is proprietary, and will be kept here as the 'secret weapon'. When we do finally stumble on the borg (or they stumble on us), we'll seed the collective by planting Windows onto a drone. It'll only take a few days, and the entire collective will consist of millions of machines working at 2 tasks, first trying to fight off infections from other drones, and second, trying to infect other drones. The collective will grind to a halt, and humanity will prevail, until next week's episode....
Great. Let's just hope that the ships don't encounter the Minbari along the way ...
No one really worries that much about Nuclear technology in space. If it were NUCULAR on the other hand...... then there would be cause for concern!
Oh - sure. Just run the working fluid through a heat exchanger and start all over again. See, I told you I'm not a rocket scientist! Hell, I'm just glad I even remembered what a Brayton cycle engine is - thermo class was a heck of a long time ago...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Yeh, Orion was the hottest thing this side of project Pluto.
Uhhh...was it because they were by Madonna or as a protest of the lame outmoded audio cassette format? Inquiring minds want to know...
billy - damn, I just got used to 8 tracks
that's right, George, there's rivers and rivers of LIQUID HYDROCARBONS down there, and America's got the mineral rights!
Aha! To Mars and the outer planets in a coal powered spaceship!!!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.