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New Nuclear-powered Spaceship Design Revealed
Iddo Genuth writes "A U.S. based company introduced an
innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months) and enable future spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling. The system, which may dramatically affect interplanetary space travel is called the Miniature Magnetic Orion (Mini-Mag Orion for short), and is an optimization of the 1958 Orion interplanetary propulsion concept."
recently have an article about trip to mars in a week? So.. this is really.. an inferior mode of transport for all those Mars holidayers...
Hopefully this spaceship will be able to slow down before it reaches mars.
Unlike some spaceships... http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/13/2328233
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
That's unfair. Gibson's "design" was loose speculation, whereas hard math has been done both on the original Orion and on this potential improvement.
Certainly, neither of them has existed in practice -- but one was wild speculation, whereas the other had (and has) actual engineering.
An WHUMP Orion WHUMP based WHUMP drive WHUMP can WHUMP be a WHUMP bit WHUMP rough, WHUMP any WHUMP study WHUMP on the WHUMP effects WHUMP on cargo/passWHUMPengers?
speeding up via riding the wave of successive explosions is great for an unmanned craft. For a manned craft, though, I have a couple questions:
1. How will people deal with the psychological effect of the never-ending pounding brought by this type of propulsion?
2. Will scientists avoid this issue by instead strapping people into some kind of suspension and using a fewer number of larger explosions to get up-to-speed per day?
3. What effect would that have on a person physically? We know people can take X G's, but what about being subjected to constant hits like that. If they are stronger, it could have some as-yet unforseen effect on our physiology.
...I think someone forgot to tell the sun.
Like all things to do with space travel, it depends on how much you're willing to pay
... this just means you get to nowhere faster.
(Sorry, reflexive poke at Wyoming. Wyoming has wonderful people, natural resources, and breathable atmosphere. Mars is 0 for 3. Jupiter doesn't even have a surface to land on, but now we can hurry up to get there and not land on it! Like the robot we're sending had some place it would rather be for the marginal time...)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
A treaty is only as good as the signatories. There is no particular reason why the signatories couldn't write and sign a new treaty that just specified that there were to be no nuclear powered satellites in orbit or nuclear weapons in space.
As that is more or less the intent. A spaceship that was nuclear powered would really only be an issue if it was allowed to orbit the earth long enough to fall out of orbit.
Here's a few pics of the Mini-Mag in action. Looks vaguely familiar... Interesting how the cargo capsule seems to release from one end and dock at the other. Very intriguing.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Nuclear weapons, yes.
Power sources, no.
There are plenty of probes and spy satellites that are powered by plutonium-laden RTGs.
If their gadget for doing the z-pinch thingy is anything like the Z machine at Sandia you won't be putting it on a spacecraft any time soon...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
no, nuclear weapons in space are banned by treaty. we use nuclear power in the form of nuclear batterys in space all the time. mostly because they can stand up to the temprature extremes of space, and will outlast the hardware they are installed in. (Vs a alkaline or some other form of battery, which does not have these properties.)
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
If you unscrew the cap in the stern of the spacecraft, you will find a spare nuclear reactor behind the battery terminal.
First off, I am not a rocket scientist, but I am studying for a BS in Aerospace Engineering.
How exactly is this supposed to reduce travel time? Current lengths of travel are not due to a lack of available thrust or due to amount of fuel available but rather the path taken to reach the destination. Currently in order to travel to say Mars Hohman transfers are often used. These paths and others like them take a certain amount of time to complete, and stronger engines or more available Delta-V allow only for more instantaneous entrances of the transfers or more allowed change in course once at the ship's destination.
In order to reduce time traveled a different orbital mechanic is needed. Even if a ship were to travel in a straight line toward a destination at a rapid enough speed that it would not have to meet up with it too much further along in its orbit it would have to be able to kill relative speed quickly enough to enter a capture orbit.
Anyone know what orbital transfer method they're saying that this engine makes possible?
The original studies performed extensive studies on this problem. They solved it with a double shock absorber system; by tuning the absorbers and the frequency at which bombs were ejected, they could achieve a constant acceleration of 1-2 g.
This one is going to be built in orbit. It will never take off or land.
OTOH, the "fuel" pellets are going to be made of fissionable materials. I hope they point the nozzle in a direction that doesn't result in un-detonated bomblets burning up in the atmosphere.
These people are visionaries, except when it comes to anticipating large server loads.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
and enable future spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling.
The New Horizons probe, heading to Pluto, took slightly more than a year to reach Jupiter. However, there was no need to stop (park in orbit) and it didn't need to carry bulky life-support stuff. Thus, it could take the fast train.
Table-ized A.I.
You mean like a plutonium powered vehicle?
I believe they are using the "Journalist Transfer Orbit." This is a highly specialized piece of orbital mechanics: basically, you take the average distance to the destination as given by Wikipedia and divide by the spacecraft's top speed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Reading the (now Slashdotted) article, it sounds like this design came directly out of research done into antimatter catalyzed micro-fission. ACMF is a well-proven technology that uses minuscule amounts of antimatter to kickstart or enhance a fission reaction. Because the technology was fairly straightforward and had good returns for antimatter quantities that are reasonable to produce, NASA was funding research into an engine called ICAN.
I remember that there was some talk of actually launching a small probe based on the concept, but apparently the plan was scrapped. (Probably to help fund manned space travel.) Whatever antimatter confinement technologies they were working on may have led to the development of this new magnetic confinement fission technology. Or it could just be a coincidence.
Either way, nuclear technology of this sort is fairly well developed and is not a pipe dream. At least not from an engineering standpoint. Getting the risk adverse US Government and NASA to actually build one of the many known-quantity engines we have on hand is a completely different ball of wax. They're still trying to get us reliable LEO access (Thank God for Griffin is all I can say), so I doubt we'll be seeing any advanced engines in practice until the CEV/Orion project enters its third phase.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
First, this is a blog troll, to drive traffic to some ".info" site. The actual paper, "Proposed Follow-on Mini-Mag Orion Pulsed Propulsion Concept" presented at an AIAA conference last year, is more useful.
The basic idea is to create a small fission (not fusion) explosion using magnetic compression. Nuclear weapons use chemical explosives to create an implosion, and during the implosion the fissionable material is compressed hard enough to get a 1.5x to (maybe) 2x density increase. With magnetic compression, a small pellet can be compressed hard enough to get a 10x density increase. This allows smaller explosions, around 50 gigajoules instead of the 20 terajoules of a fission bomb. They want to use curium or californium as the fuel, rather than plutonium.
They also want to use magnetic containment, rather than an Orion-style "pusher plate" sprayed with oil. Unclear if that can be made to work.
The experimental work (they compressed an aluminum cylinder with a big magnet at Sandia) was done back in 2002. This isn't really under active development.
It's not a totally unreasonable idea, but it would be a huge job to make it work. For one thing, the plan is to assemble a large spacecraft in orbit, not to take off from Earth. It doesn't help with the problem of putting mass in orbit.
The use of nuclear weapons is banned, yes.
There has been research into nuclear rockets (NERVA), and nuclear power sources.
Project Prometheus shows promise. Already, most of the long range probes that NASA has use radioactive decay as a power source, which is pretty safe and reliable.
Still, this has very little to do with Orion apart from them both being nuclear pulse propulsion. They only call it a successor to Orion because most people are familiar with Orion.
Orion has already been obsoleted by a similar (but much more effective) design using normal-sized nuclear explosions -- Medusa. Medusa reverses the Orion design, having a parachute in front towing the craft, and detonating the explosives in front of the parachute. It uses structures in tension instead of compression (lighter), it allows the explosions to be further from the craft (less radiation), allows a longer acceleration stroke (smoother acceleration), and captures a larger percentage of the explosive energy.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
The company behind the technology is Andrews Space at this site.
From my (admitted limited) viewpoint as an (inexperienced) aerospace engineer, they look like the real thing.
The system is actually described in a 2003 AIAA conference paper linked on this page. The paper is titled "Mini-MagOrion: A Pulsed Nuclear Rocket for Crewed Solar System Exploration."
I've only glanced over the article so far, but it suggests specific impulses in the 10,000 seconds plus range. That's a critical measure of efficiency in a rocket that dictates the velocity it can obtain. The shuttle's SSMEs get about 455 seconds of specific impulse at a high thrust (millions of Newtons) and ion drives, like the one on the DS1 probe, and the like get specific impulses (Isp) of about 3000 seconds at low thrust. (millinewtons). Apparently the Mini-Mag Orion can produce thrust on par with the SSME. Yikes.
--sabre86
...Calculus!! I think it was Destination Moon or Explorers on the Moon (Adventures of Tintin). He had a nuclear powered rocket then. Bah!
The common thread that we keep coming back to is that to really do spaceflight, you must have some form of nuclear power. The laws of physics are profoundly strong on this point. Space is too far and gravity is too strong for chemical rockets to really be successful.
The ideal solution is to find a source of uranium in space, beyond Earth's gravity well, such that, we can mine the uranium in space, and fuel nuclear powered spacecraft from perhaps the moon. I don't see that happening any time soon, as, it is my understanding that its is practically a fluke that a relatively small body like Earth should wind up with such a heavy ore at all. The gods were kind to us during our solar system formation, and it feels unlikely that any asteroid should have a significant uranium deposit.
That leaves us to launching live reactors into space from Earth. Unfortunately, despite safety precautions, the environmental movement makes the development of nuclear powered spacecraft a political impossibility. We can't even build a reactor on land without a mountain of red tape and lawsuits from the greens, even when we know that building such reactors are necessary to combat global warming. Putting a nuclear reactor into something that flies is unthinkable to them, and they would surely think that putting a nuclear reactor into a rocket is downright crazy. Even RTGs, relatively benign, are met with protest. Were it up them, there would be no pictures of Saturn at all from Cassini.
In this one area, the left wing claim to scientific curiosity falls flat on its face. The science is not worth the risk. I think the key to be able to do this, really, is going to be to engage the right wing instead and paint such research as a matter of national security. The right wing, despite its proclaimed conservatism, has a penchant for throwing caution into the wind when it suits it. Heck, they'd blow off global warming just to be able to keep driving trucks. Put a nuclear reactor on a spacecraft to get to Mars in a few weeks, sure, why not? For them, though, the issue is going to be why. Doing it just for the science isn't going to cut it. However, the right does have a penchant for engaging in enormous projects for ideological goals - witness the cold war with Russia, the current war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. None of THOSE projects were cheap or short term, and honestly, only the right wing has the zeal needed to overcome failure after failure as would occur in a really long term space colonization project. Even if you disagree with it, religion is an enormously powerful motivator.
Thus, you'll never get many righties to buy into space for the science, or the future profits, because both don't really do much. But if you could sell them space as a religious duty, then by God, they will say screw the left, throw a hundred billion dollars a year into building nuclear rockets that this country needs, all to create christian colonies on planets and take resources from asteroids. If anything, one could always further argue that with the Russians claiming the North Pole, then, the USA has to claim (something), and it may as well be Mars and the asteroid belt. Asking them to void the UN Treaty on claiming stuff on space would elicit an automatic yes - as the right is already predisposed against the UN.
Surely such a project would be better for the world than the war on terror.
The point is this, and this goes for both left and right. We are entering a time of great consequence for the United States, if not the world, and, it is time for us to stop seeing each other as enemies simply because we have different ideologies. We can make our differences work for us, so long as we express what we want for ourselves as individuals, not as collective party members, and from there identify those strengths we have in each other.
In my case, I selfishly want to see the USA building a fleet of nuclear, manned, rockets, mining asteroids, and colonizing other planets. And, if I have to read the
This is my sig.
Even if this craft can reach speeds of 10% the speed of light we would still be limited to interplanetary exploration and exploitation (human nature dictates this). As far as interstellar travel goes it would still take about 45 years to send a spacecraft to the nearest star, not to mention the 4.5 year transmission delay. Still interplanetary travel is a big breakthrough if this article can be believed.
:-)
The real breakthrough would be an interstellar spacecraft (the realm of Science Fiction at the moment) and this would really open up our galaxy, however a person would have to live for thousands of years to visit each solar system in our galaxy for just one day even assuming travel between each solar system is almost instantaneous. Think "Star gate technology. Well I did say in the realm of Science Fiction
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
The solar system is a big enough place for exploitation, and when we're done with the planets and their moons we can look at the Kuiper belt. That should keep us busy for the next couple of centuries, at least, and also allow us to use technologies to actually analyze nearby star systems without having to send probes there just yet.
And once the solar system gets too small for use, we probably have the necessary technologies, experience and infrastructure to send something on an interstellar voyage (probably a generation ship or even a small planetoid outfitted with propulsion systems).
And the President said, "Lewis, Clark, I want you to walk around the block of the White House, its plenty big, and there's probably a lot for you to see. When you're done with that, check out Virginia. Once that is done, I want a complete survey of everything east of the Mississippi. That should keep us busy for a century."
Lewis replied, "What about the vast unexplored reaches of the west?"
To which the President slammed his fist into the desk, "Slow down, Sparky, that would take lots of money that would be better spent on the vast wasteland of New Jersey. And, it would take a long time and nothing good would come of it, I'm sure. And, it would take you forever to get the results back to us. And, you'd smell when you got back. Hell, Clark smells already. Now, you guys do as I told you, none of that 'Vast Vision' stuff."
Knowing they were beat, Lewis and Clark resigned themselves to taking a walk around the block.
"Besides," the President said, "When you finish up, you can both do commercials for Lost Horizon Airlines."
Hey, why does exploration have to be serial?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Show me the weapon.
A laser pointed at someone with the intent to cause harm - Weapon.
A laser pointed out the backend of the space craft for propulsion - Engine.
A rocket launched into a schoolyard from a neighboring territory - Weapon.
A rocket strapped to a frame with wheels on a Utah salt flat - A really stupid but exhilorating way to die, and an Engine.
So, Einstein, show me the goddamned weapon ! Too many of you freaks out there saying, "We shouldn't...", "But there's a treaty...", and some such nonsense. But you are all for saying things like, "Well its a bad law or treaty," when its something that you want.
Show me the goddamned weapon!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
And the President said, "Lewis, Clark, I want you to go explore the moon. The country needs inspiration and I am going to provide it for them"
:)
Lewis replied, "But, sir we have no way to get to the moon. Why don't we explore all that land out west that we just purchased. Few if any european has ever seen it. Meanwhile we can learn more about the moon with new telescopes, which will make us more prepared if we ever do go there."
To which the president slammed his fist into the desk, "You have no vision! Besides, building telescopes and taking long trips like that would actually cost real money. I want you to work on some inexpensive pipe-dream that sounds good in political speeches, feasibility be damned."
Knowing they were beat, Lewis and Clark resigned themselves to designing successively large cannons. The never reached the moon, and the midwest filled out slowly, but few ever crossed the rockies, much to the delight of the native tribes, who were successful in fighting off the settlers for quite some time. Until the large cannons came of course