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NASA Developing Small Nuclear Reactor For the Moon
marshotel writes "NASA astronauts will need power sources when they return to the moon and establish a lunar outpost. NASA engineers are exploring the possibility of nuclear fission to provide the necessary power, and they are taking initial steps toward a non-nuclear technology demonstration of this type of system."
Don't you need water to make electricity with a nuclear reactor, and also to cool the core?
I often asked why we can't dump our waste into space ala Superman IV.
The response is usually "Oh won't somebody think of the children if one rocket ever dropped!".
But apparently we can send it to the moon safely?
Could somebody, who perhaps knows more about the difference between uranium before and after it has been used, enlighten me as to why this would be safer?
I'm hoping someone can explain to me why the far better-established and easily-maintained option of Solar Power isn't first on the list.
I mean: negligible atmosphere, established support-structure (the ground), 100% predictable yield, negligible material costs after setup, and land-area isn't such a big issue... can't really think of a better case for it.
Meta will eat itself
Why not just buy one from the Russians? They've been using them for 30 years.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
The same thing that happens to everything else we brought to the moon that we didn't also use to get people/objects back. It's going to sit there. It's not like it'll be hurting anybody/anything either.
thing is that it's the moon, there's no rain, no wind, no groundwater.
no need to bury it.
just find a crater a little out of the way and make it into a big pile.
If in future the prospect if the land being needed comes up then you just load it up into a truck and deal with it properly since that that point there would likely be more machinery around.
Hell,the place is already radioactive.
And if it ever became a problem, just use a big slingshot (or whatever) to hurl it off in the general direction of the sun .. the only reason we dont do this with nuclear waste now is that the cost-to-orbit sucks, but for a reactor on the moon or already in space, most of the cost is absorbed already.
Assume, for a moment, that the LHC destroys the Earth by turning it into a black hole. Know what would happen to the moon?
The Moon would be unaffected. It's just as happy to orbit a 5.9736*10^24 kg black hole as it is to orbit a 5.9736*10^24 kg planet.
Black holes are just gravity, people. The only difference between them and anything else with mass is that you can get closer before you hit the event horizon than you could get before you hit the surface.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Please allow me to inject a note of reality here.
There is a serious possibility that the Americans will not be establishing a lunar base in the next twenty years. Regardless of the technology or science available.
The problem is one of money. Basically the US government is broke. It runs huge deficits. This didn't make any difference in the past when there was no other place but America for super-wealthy people and governments to put their money. That has changed.
What has also changed is that oil has gotten incredibly expensive. Cheap oil allows the economy to grow. A growing economy allows huge expensive social programs like pensions and medical care to people over 60, moon projects, massive government bureaus, and permanent endless war on the other side of the world.
When the economy stops growing, house prices stop rising, and the sources of easy credit dry up, serious choices have to be made. Everything can't be afforded: some things must be abandoned. This is reality in 2008. It's not 1967 anymore.
The moon projects are easy targets. Although these projects are popular among the young and educated, these projects are expendable. There are no voters on the moon. There's no oil there. There's no one there who can be shaken down with atomic bombs to be persuaded to buy USA Treasury bonds to finance the endless deficits.
It's easy for the NASA administrators to hold press conferences and announce grandiose plans. It's easy to put big budget programs into future federal budget projections. But the coming years, when the true extent of the bankruptcy of the US government becomes apparent, these space programs might be quietly dropped. This is reality of the 21st century. Again, it's not 1967 anymore.
how is that different from the gamma radiation already extant in space?
antipaucity
Ionized moon dust hangs in the "air" and sticks to everything. Solar is not a great option on the moon, at least until we can develop ways to repel moon dust. It would be too high maintenance.