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NASA Developing Nuclear Reactor For Moon and Mars
Al writes "NASA recently finished testing a miniature nuclear reactor that would provide power for an astronaut base on the Moon or Mars. The reactor combines a small fission system with a Stirling engine to make a 'safe, reliable, and efficient' way to produce electricity. The system being tested at NASA's Glenn Research Center can produce 2.3 kilowatts and could be ready for launch by 2020, NASA officials say. The reactor ought to provide much more power than solar panels but could prove controversial with the public concerned about launching a nuclear power source and placing it on the Moon or another planet."
Yeah, until the fuel runs out. I'm pretty sure that with solar panels, the sun never runs out. I wonder how much it costs to call up Uranium-R-Us and have them run up some more nuclear fuel. I suppose they'd be smart and bring enough for like 100 years but still, it's a bit more dangerous than solar and results in a radioactive byproduct. I saw with the recent advances in solar energy, why not just put some really efficient solar panels up there instead?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"We are not building a system that needs hundreds of gigawatts of power like those that produce electricity for our cities," says Don Palac, the project manager at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The system needs to be cheap, safe, and robust and "our recent tests demonstrated that we can successfully build that," says Palac.
I read this as, "the system needs to come in at no more than half the cost of a gigawatt power plant". I'm all for space travel, but I can't help but flinch when I hear somebody at NASA say "cheap".
Then they can give the reactor to me and I can finally send the power company a photocopy of my ass; I don't even have to worry about disposal! I hear there are plenty of countries like Iran and North Korea looking for nuclear refuse.
Nuclear power is actually one of the safest, cleanest, and most reliable forms of power ever invented. So long as no meteroites hit it, we should be fine. Huh. Wonder what caused all those craters on the moon.....
My blog
The uranium that goes into a reactor isn't all that radioactive - it's the spent fuel that comes out that's the problem. If a rocket carrying this thing explodes on take off it isn't going to be Chernobyl. In fact, it sounds a good deal safer than all those Pu-238 RTGs that have been sent up there.
It'll be just like that movie where the moon exploded and blew up the Earthlings.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
It shouldn't be more controversial than the reactors that powered Voyager and other deep space probes. There have been protests over some of the more potentially dangerous reactors that might have caused contamination over a wide area if they blew up; but IIRC they launched anyway.
A reactor that small shouldn't require a huge ammount of fissile material. I bet it could blow up in the atmosphere and produce less radiation than we get from a day of coal fired power in the Eastern US. Coal is full of trace radioactive elements, and it adds up when you burn as much as we do.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
For some reason, I'm not too concerned with having a nuclear reactor on the Moon or on Mars. Sure, there are risks in launching it, but it's probably not going to be operating while it's being launched, so I'm not especially worried about that either.
Besides, in 90 years, when they've built up a huge moonbase and a large stockpile of spent nuclear material, it can explode and send the moon hurtling out of the solar system! It'll be Space: 19992099!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's a Stirling Engine....not Sterling.
An engine made out of silver? Or just a generally excellent one? Ah, a Stirling engine.
More quality editing from Slashdot...
Stirling from the name of inventor - Dr. Robert Stirling.
That's one standard kitchen outlet in North America. You could run a coffee maker and a microwave, but not a whole lot more...
How much does it weigh in total (including shielding etc)?
Ian Ameline
...free Mars!
All of our inhibitions about nuclear power is why we are doomed. Actually even wrote about this previously... the real danger to the west is not nuclear proliferation from atomic bombs, but from third world countries adopting nuclear mining, nuclear aircraft, nuclear ships, and nuclear spacecraft and pretty much leaving the west behind in a windmill driven green feel good stone ages.
This is my sig.
what's the use in worrying? half a world away, people are working on tablets to drop in your city's drinking water to kill everyone you know. just relax and hope for the best. maybe we'll learn something there on the moon. hell, i heard people still read books on the moon. must be a reason to go there.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Why not re-open research into nuclear thermal rockets? They were able to get them up to 40% efficiency back in 1972, I'm would hope we can do better than that now. Use the reactor to heat a propellant to get you to the moon, then use the reactor on the moon to power the base. If it's time to head home, you only need to ship a relatively stable propellant up, rather than actual rocket fuel.
Maybe NASA should invest a bit more down here in Earth, buying to the mad Dr. Browm a bunch of old Deloreans to see if somewhat can get a small (Mr.) Fussion reactor. Or wait just 6 years,
In the low gravity there you could literally chuck the waste off of the planet with a catapult or something toward the sun (assuming you weren't just amassing some kind of stockpile...).
Its something we've wanted do on earth in the past but with rockets it seems too dangerous a risk to the populace. The moon would not have the same limitations (or atmosphere for that matter).
They used Plutonium 238 and thermoelectrics to generate power on the Apollo missions. It's neat that they're building a "real" nuclear reactor, but this isn't the first time we've sent the stuff into space.
When I first saw this, I thought it was for powering VASIMR plasma engines.
Recently, AW&ST had an article suggesting that transit times between Mars and Earth 30 days could be possible using a continuously running VASIMR engine (it has an insanely high specific impulse). BUT, it would require a nuclear power source because the amount of solar panels (especially outside of earth's orbit) woudl be impractical.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
1. Ignorance.
2. The Internet
There is a whole lot of people who can now be offended at things they would never have heard of before or hand reason to be offended of. Never under estimate the ability of humans to make ignorance even more prevalent. What many thought would free us from ignorance only seemed to exaggerate it more.
I guess there is another option, it never ceases to amaze me how many people can find offense in anything. I think they have a need to be noticed or to find a way to blame others for any condition they are in.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This is the most intelligent comment on this thread so far, why it is posted as AC I cannot imagine. It reminds me of a brilliant comment on the assembly of nuclear fuel rods: that they are so nonradioactive that they can be assembled by hand. The operators wear gloves, not to protect them from the fuel, but to protect the fuel from their fingers.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
These guys have one ready now, no fission needed. http://hyperionpowergeneration.com/ I have also heard that the US Military already has a heavy lift rocket that is currently in operation and is very safe. We could also modify the current rockets used to boost the shuttle into orbit to take lunar module up. BUT NO!! LET'S START FROM SCRATCH, BREAK THE BUDGET RE-DESIGNING THE WHEEL AND TAKE TWENTY FIVE YEARS TO GET THERE INSTEAD OF THE TEN IT TOOK US IN THE 60'S
Why can't I have one of these in my back yard?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I have a 4 kW PV array on my roof. It is practically low tech at this point. The array isn't even very big and performs well despite the fact that I live at the 48th parallel in a part of the world not known for brilliant sunshine.
Yes, I realize that unless your base is at a pole, you'll have an added expense to store energy, but batteries, inverters, etc, are low tech too. Standalone PV systems are well debugged and manageable by an interested homeowner. It should be a piece of cake for astronauts to maintain one.
If it were a 2.3 megawatt reactor, then I'd say "go for it," but a couple of kilowatts seem awfully wimpy. Perhaps it's really meant as a backup?
Why isn't NASA looking into technology to exploit the temperature difference between lit and shaded areas on the moon to generate electricity? That should be an excellent source of power most of the time.
Wind Power?
Ok, great, they put the heat in one side of the Sterling Cycle Engine, and it moves to the other side and we get motion, but what do they do with the heat? There's no air/water to bump against a cooling fin to get the activity of the molecules. Does the "icy vacuum of space" actually cool things very well?
If it did, why wouldn't a sterling cycle engine with one side in the shade and one side in the sun work pretty darn well anyhow?
I suspect that it DOESN'T, in which case they'll need to bore a big hole to put the heat in via fluid transferring to lunar dirt.
So suppose we start using lots of these on the moon. Then we start burying the waste (and perhaps shipping up lots more from the earth). Through improper (too close together) spacing of the reactors, a chain reaction starts. That, triggers the ignition of the Helium-3 that's been deposited by the solar wind for the last 4-1/2 billion years, and blows the moon out of orbit!
Anyway, that's the only way I could figure that the moon, a mass of 7.347 x 10^22 KG, could get blown out of orbit. All the nuclear weapons on earth couldn't budge it, but maybe the lunar deposits of helium-3 could do it! Perhaps that's what also happened in the (remake) of the Time Machine, they mention a 20MT explosion on the moon would be used in preparation for a lunar colony. Next scene: they've spectacularly fractured it, raining debris all over the earth and making the world fit only for the Eloi and Morlocks. No way a 20MT explosion could fracture the Moon, it can barely vaporize an island!
Wake me when I can buy me a Ford Nucleon. 5000 miles on a single fueling. Take that, Tesla Motors!
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Of testing a nuclear reactor for the moon if we haven't even been there yet?
With such endeavors there is the internal opinion issue: in case of a failed take-off (think Challenger or Columbia) what happens with the nuclear reactor? NASA will have to prove even in such situation the reactor is going to be 100% safe.
If the American public will accept the safety assurances of NASA, then the Russians and the Chinese are going to raise HELL about the idea of having nuclear energy in space. No, it's not about atomic bombs - but nuclear reactors can easily be used as energy sources for powerful lasers.
NASA might be able to persuade the American public, but will never persuade the Russians and the Chinese about somethign that indirectly can obliterate their satelites and misiles.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
a cold fusion reactor and layered with a aluminum oxynitride dome for meteroites. anyways nuclear power is an insult to nature. nuclear chemical reactions occur in space. not in PLANETS. they're many ways of producing and harnessing power with out going nuclear.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. - Nikola Tes
The 50's promise of a reactor in your basement to power those nifty gadgets are finally here!
I'm going to celebrate with some burgers in non-degradable styrofoam containers while driving my three ton car (with wings!) down a twenty lane highway.
Thank you Gernsback! *shudder*
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
That wasn't supposed to blow up inside earths atmosphere, but it did. Wouldn't that explosion have been even more fun if it had a nuclear reactor on board? I don't like the idea of my kids playing outside being showered with radioactive isotopes from a mini nuclear reactor.
Ah, the articles says they'll have 1080 square feet of cooling. I'm not sure whether that says the vacuum stinks at cooling or not.
How much would be needed in air?
No one wants to live on the moon. Use our research dollars on something that actually helps our real problems here on earth.
We have to start somewhere for those pools of green goo that some space marine will have to jump over, around, or wade through once we open an inter-dimensional gateway on Mars to hell. Hope this thing is spec'd to have a small storage box with duct tape and a flash light.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Yes, because, you know, we're going to have to drop atom bombs on those moon Nazis.
Of course, our other option is pelting them with hippies. Apparently, you're volunteering for that choice.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
there is some good uranium on the moon. It is possible that down the road we will be able to mine it and process it. From there, that uranium (plutonium?) can be "thrown" off the moon and then used all over the solar system.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why would you send the reactor up *activated*? The only part of the reactor that's really of any concern is the fuel - enriched uranium. So, maybe the answer is to send the uranium up in little bits, so that even if it *did* blow up, there's such a small amount of non-reacted fuel (I might be wrong, but if I understand the nuclear fuel cycle, it shouldn't be very dangerous if it hasn't been reacted yet, and there's not a sufficient quantity to start a reaction?)
Can someone who knows more comment on whether I'm right or not? My understanding is that small quantities of unreacted uranium scattered in the atmosphere would pose essentially zero risk to life on earth?
If so, then you only assemble the reactor, insert the fuel, and initiate fission once it reaches the moon, at which point, who cares? I'm sure, having little atmosphere and no magnetic field to protect it, the moon must be subjected to a heck of a lot of radiation all the time, anyhow, no?
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT/RT2002/5000/5490thieme.html
Well,
of course the first few power plants should be nuclear. However with a stirling engine like that it would make more sense to have the following plants sun powered (mirrors focusing sun light on the engine). You need to find a way to store the energy created during "daytime", ofc (which is ot that hard).
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Quick, use the amnesia ray. Be sure to wipe your memory too.
OH NOS...SOLAR POWER = SOLAR POWERED WEAPONS!! Seriously...almost ANY technological advance can be weaponized (either directly or indirectly). Just because a technology can be weaponized doesn't mean it should be ignored and 'forgotten'. I'll provide a simple example of many...robots. Robots can be weaponized (and in fact they have been). But their benefit to society is extremely great (where would manufacturing be without continuous advances in robotic technology?). But by your argument, since I can mass produce an army of killer robots (given the necessary resources), we should abolish and forget them. I'm afraid that would be an illogical action (as would banning nuclear research).
"I suspect that it DOESN'T, in which case they'll need to bore a big hole to put the heat in via fluid transferring to lunar dirt."
Ok, so what's the problem? Dig a trench in the lunar soil, and bury a heat exchanger down in the soil. Dump heat into lunar soil, which will pretty soon radiate it out into space. Is that a problem? Seems like a very simple, easy, cheap (well, kind of expensive to send a trench digger to the moon, I suppose, but once it's there, it's there) solution?
"The public" has specific concerns about nuclear power in space.
(1) For plutonium-based reactors, the fact that plutonium is highly toxic is a concern, should the rocket break up during launch.
(2) For all nuclear power in space, there is a general concern that it is a stepping stone towards nuclear weapons in space, a potentially very dangerous development.
(3) For planetary exploration, contamination of an otherwise pristine environment may also be a problem, since there is no way of retrieving or destroying the nuclear fuel.
The SNAP reactor runs on uranium, so (1) shouldn't be a problem. Since the amounts of uranium involved are small, (2) may not be much of a concern either in this case. For the moon, (3) isn't a concern, but for Mars it is.
But it is still worth worrying about this sort of thing.
but could prove controversial with the public concerned about launching a nuclear power source and placing it on the moon or another planet.
Why does the media see fit to keep putting words into the mouths of the "public" lately? Ask the average man on the street and I bet he doesn't give a shit about space travel, let alone putting a nuclear reactor on the moon.
Having nuclear waste and reactor failure or leakage on Earth clearly isn't good enough, we need to spread this wonderful creation throughout the Multiverse !
Because we have VASMIR coming. Combine that with a nice nuclear reactor and we are looking at some good speeds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I didn't read the article :) so I don't know if it talked about life of the system, but if it will last more than 10 years, I want to put one in my garage. I has to be better than coal, my neighbors keep complaining about the ash from my coal fired power plant landing on their cars...
Am i correctly remembering that the Moon has a good supply of H3?
It wouldn't be the first source you'd use, but once the infrastructure is in place it should be a good source of energy.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
All of our inhibitions about nuclear power is why we are doomed.
Until we start using nuclear fuel efficiently and solve the nuclear waste problem, nuclear power is irresponsible.
Of course, we know how to do all that: there is only one inhibition that dooms the West, namely the US government's prohibition on the use of breeder reactors worldwide. Without breeder reactors, we are wasting most of our fuel in highly inefficient reactors, wasting U-238 on munitions, and generating very dangerous nuclear waste.
I would imagine the point of this is to have a reliable power source when the sun's not shining? According to Physlink the Lunar day/night cycle is 28.5 earth-days long. So, you would have about 14 days of darkness between 14 days of light. Not, perhaps, the best place for a solar power solution? That's not to say that Solar couldn't play an important role in providing a lot of additional power, but it's always good to have some kind of backup, no?
Nuclear seems more practical, for this particular application than, say, diesel, since a single fueling could provide power for years.
Thorium reactors don't make plutonium. No need for a light water or breeder reactor for it. I'm told that the fission byproducts are an order of magnitude safer as well, but I haven't seen the math for it yet.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Why do people care if there is nuclear waste or leakage, or a meltdown, or whatever, *on the moon*? There's no life on the moon for us to hurt? What does a bunch of moon dust care if there is some radioactive isotopes mixed in with the rest of the soil?
40 is more like it. 2.3 as in the article summary wouldn't be enough for a human moon base, that wouldn't even cover the extremes of heating and cooling needed. 2.3 is a small home genny size.
Why couldn't we just make a giant plot of solar panels on the moon? We'd need more batteries to store the charge but why not take advantage of the nuclear reactor we've already got?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some hippie opposed to nuclear reactors. I guess 14 days without light is a problem though...
*DrugCheese rants*
Not in my neighboring celestial body!
Government at work, spending good money on a project that someone else has already done most of the work on. (I am sure that were talking to the folks at Toshiba and Westinghouse asking for pointers).
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Don't worry, we've got a plan to deal with Moon Nazis.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
We'll just bottle that knowledge away, then, perhaps to keep the Genie company.
Not a typewriter
Abolishing something is so ridiculously hard to do to 100% that it's almost never an option, see prohibition or the current war on drugs in America that's been going on for 30 years to no perceivable effect. As for making everyone forget about it, well..... I can't say that it's never happened before (if it did we forgot about it) but I would have to think it's would be magnitudes more difficult than abolition. If you think nuclear power is that evil then how about a solution that has a reasonable chance at success, heck, I'd be willing to listen to one that even had a minuscule chance.
Spouting slogans and raving on about the evils of any topic incessantly just get you labeled a a bit of a nut and in the end is in no way productive.
"but could prove controversial with the public concerned about launching a nuclear power source and placing it on the moon or another planet."
If only the public did give a shit.
The only thing the "public" will hear is nuclear and another planet and maybe get a little bit scared after the media has their way with them.
Concerned is not the right word. Hysteria? Maybe...
...how about earth!
I can think of a hell of a lot of terrestrial applications for the same thing. I guess it is a matter of cost. Here is a prime example of perhaps technology coming out of the space program with direct implications. Even at the low output, applications for remote areas would still be relevant.
Nuclear power is NEVER a viable solution to ANY problem for the simple reason that the knowledge to create nuclear power is the knowledge to make nuclear weapons. For the simpler people in the crowd, NUCLEAR POWER EQUALS NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There is NO SUCH THING as a "peaceful" nuclear program. All nuclear material can and will be weaponized. For this reason alone nuclear power must be forever abolished and forgotten.
Bring on the U.N. sanctions. No one sell pocket protectors to NASA. They might be used for nefarious purposes.
This device went over budget and deadline. But in the long it allow more capable space probes than the current nuclear thermal generators.
The Mars Science Lander, now named "Curiosity", is a billion over budget and and two years late in launching. It had almost derailed the entire NASA program. Curosity is the size of an minivan and is too large for conventional solar panels.
Itâ(TM)s about f*ing time that our government started to invest effort in making safe clean nuclear power for a change. This is the one power source that everyone had ignored and condemned as being unsafe and too controversial. Donâ(TM)t get me wrong Iâ(TM)m not some earth hating person that wants to litter our planet with radioactive waste. Nuclear power has become much more safe and can provide more electricity than that of water, steam, or solar.
True that nuclear power plant can be unsafe but that is all base on regulations and standards that are 20 to 30 years ago. Now a days those regulations and standards have improved and drastically changed due to incident in Eastern Europe. Itâ(TM)s great that we have solar and battery power to help us stay green but these power source are weak compare to what nuclear power can provide. And what a lot of these so call green piece fool forget to tell the rest of the public is that batteries are one of the biggest polluting waste we currently have and our way of resolving it is, we are hollowing out caves from mountain ranges in the Nevada desert to burry all these batteries along with other hazardous waste.
Damn. The idea of having a loaded trebuchet on the moon is just freakishly awesome. The mind boggles at the possibilities inherent in this...
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
On an outpost that is hopefully* going to be permanently manned, 8 years seems a little short sighted. And if we're honest with ourselves, even those 8 years are not a realistic estimate. Consider that this thing has lots of movable parts and a very volatile coolant system all of which needs to withstand the extraordinary stress of launch and landing.
Consider RTGs on the other hand. They have no moving parts, a much longer lifespan, and a very well known failure mode (continuous degradation of the fission core and thermoelectric elements). While they do degrade considerably over several decades, they do not ever need maintenance and they don't fail suddenly like this very expensive and complex reactor will. Of course 40kW is an energy budget that could only be satisfied by several of these modules, but on the plus side this would promote a decentralized power architecture for the presumed offworld base. The reactor behemoth on the other hand will just fail spectacularly one day (probably after a long series of notorious problems that started on launch day) and Earth will need to ship a fucking big replacement package all the way up there while the Mars ground crew sits in the dark and with minimal life support, taking very shallow breaths.
* the reason I use that word here is because we probably will have just one phenomenally expensive mission that lasts a few weeks at the outset and after that we won't ever go there again. If the Moon mission era is any indication.
How dare we pollute an already dangerously lethal radioactive environment with more radioactive elements!!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Having two (or more) distinct and separate power sources makes more sense for security. Stuff built by humans sometimes has a tendency to malfunction. I know here on the farm having a few large redundant diesel generators has sure saved our bacon when the main grid supply goes down, which it tends to do on the very hottest days now, right when we really *need* the power the most to run the broiler houses air fans. We have roughly a five minute critical time window when we need to switch over, and that's here on Earth where it is quite pleasant compared to the extremes on the moon. I know I wouldn't want to be there with just one power supply, no matter how big it was.
I'm not sure yet, what with being a Heinlein fan and all, but there is a promising non-Heinlein movie coming up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEueJnsu80
Just in case somebody can't stand gratuitous use of mirrored and non-mirrored swastikas, this is a comedy.
Je me souviens.
This would only be useful on the poles, but the heat collector would be fairly light weight, and a similar one stuck in the ground behind a berm might work. Still, this like solar PV, is only good at the poles. You will still need nukes to move around.
The other thought is that any good heat collector would be needed to heat the base. They could get it from the nukes, but this could also work.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Okay, can someone tell me if I'm full of it or if this is a good idea?
The big 'excuse' of why we don't want a reactor in space is because the rocket might blow up and it'll cause cancer..
Why not use a large 'gun' (rail/coil/whatever) to launch the fuel into orbit instead of rockets?! Unlike a rocket which may fail anytime during it's ascent, a ballistic projectile is pretty much fool proof as long as the initial launch works properly and it doesn't hit anything.
But the best part is, I'm pretty sure nuclear fuel can't be damaged by the high G forces of launch so unlike astronauts or complex instruments we don't have to worry about excessive acceleration damaging the payload.
And if you want to get really crazy, if the launcher was electrically powered by a nuclear breeder reactor, you could manufacture the fuel on site instead of having to transport it.
And for the final thought, what if you build a gun like this for EVERY reactor? But instead of putting it into orbit make it powerful enough to launch it into the sun or out of the solar system, or into Jupiter. No more worrying about how to bury used nuclear fuel....
Capital letters were an invention of Satan after he was thrown off the Anunaki space ship. He gave the first capital letter he invented, the letter L, to the Australian Aborigines who used it to hunt animals and wage war with each other. It is no coincidence that Viking battle axes are in the shape of the letter T and the Nazi Swastika uses 4 L's. I realized this while watching Sesame Street and having a nice glass of distilled water and pure grain alcohol. All those capital letters are shown by - wait for it - Monsters! It's all so very clear to me now! We must now take our capital letter to the moon so we can make an end of them and the moon-dwelling Nazis for all time!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Weight is the main factor in the number of things that can go up in a rocket.
Nuclear is inherently a big win, in terms of Available Enthalpy (if scared, just read: Power) versus weight. Chemical reactions can yield 13 megajoules per kilogram. Nuclear fission can get you 82 million megajoules per kilogram. In terms of possible exhaust velocity, you can get 4.5 km/s out of chemical propellants, but a potential 12,800 km/s out of nuclear. Fusion is even better with 347 million MJ/kg of useful energy. But only using present day technology, beamed power sources can match anything out there in the theoretical realm. We'd only need to launch mirrors and reflectors and leave the heavy power generation on the ground. It wouldn't be easy, but the basic physics is very favorable -- tons of equipment could just sit on the ground instead of needing to be accelerated to high speed. (Sources, Zubrin's _Entering Space_)
Gronk!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Somebody doesn't seem to have done the math here. 2.3 kW of power, assuming ~1100 W/m^2 insolation, a 30% conversion efficiency, gives something like an array of solar panels less than 9 ft by 9ft (2.7 m^2). Does the article discuss how much the reactor plus the engine might weigh? I have a hard time believing its lighter than a solar array (unless they intend to launch it cold and bury it on site to shield people from the radiation).
Note any lunar sites are likely to be in places where there is a mixture of sun/shade and where long term oxygen/water production is likely to be handled on-site (so they are likely to have gas storage and/or electrolysis capabilities) for energy storage during any dark periods.
Mars is a different problem where planetary rotation and reduced insolation (esp. during dust storms) may come into play. But given the increased abilities one can expect from semi-intelligent robots over the next 10-20 years we have no business sending fragile humans on risky missions to Mars anyway. The only humans who should be going to Mars are those who can afford to pay for the trip themselves and stupid enough to want to take the risks involved in doing so. At the risk of being flamed -- you might wish to keep in mind precisely *who* came up with the humans should visit Mars plan (ignoring the bright people who might have been involved who presumably have vested interests in human space exploration) [1].
1. And don't give me the "humans need a refuge site" song and dance. Give me a cost comparison per person study between a Mars colony and self-sustaining terrestrial sub-surface ocean/land colonies. Anything that represents a significant threat in the near future (millions of years) to sub-surface colonies on Earth probably represents a threat on the moon or Mars as well.
It could cause global warming to like umm speed up and stuff. Nuclear stuff is bad,, it glows in the dark man!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's in one of the HSE discussion documents. There's a lot of other information there, but this one caught my eye. I didn't record the link at the time, I'm afraid, but the alphas from uranium have practically no penetrating power, and when the uranium is in clad pellets nothing will come out.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
About time. 25 years later than they should have begun.
Why couldnt we buy a 2.2KWatt or 20KWATT portable reactor for home use ?I'm willing to put it in my backyard and get reliable energy rather than these sunshine solar pannels.
What if we have a Space: 1999 type problem:
The underlying storyline of Space: 1999 centered on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha following a calamity on 13 September 1999. A huge nuclear waste dump on the far side of the Moon detonates in a massive thermonuclear explosion, initiated by the buildup of magnetic radiation which was released, causing a nuclear chain reaction. The force of the explosion causes the Moon to be sent hurtling out of Earth's orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, stranding the 311 crew members[5], in effect becoming the "spaceship" on which the protagonists travel, looking for a new home. During their interstellar journey, the Alphans encounter a vast array of alien civilizations, dystopian societies, and strange phenomena previously unseen by man.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I would certainly not want to touch a Uranium rod with my bare hands. It is not the radioactivity you need to worry about but the toxicity of the metal.
...but in Space 1999 the moon did not explode nor did it kill all the Earthlings. There was an explosion ON the moon and, because the writers had never heard of physics, it magically pushed the moon off into a different solar system each week. Space 1899 would have been a better name - at least they didn't have relativity then.
"the public concerned about launching a nuclear power source and placing it on the Moon or another planet"
Its not the public. These whack-job left overs from the 70's and 80's are hardly contributing members of the public. Its these degenerate retards that should be pinned up on TV and ridiculed. But no. The media is full of sympathetic whack job lefties that call these freaks "the public" and senior citizens worried about socialized medicine "angry mobs".
For those of you out there that got swept up in the anti-Bush frenzy of the past 4 years, take a deep breath and take a look at who is leading the way. Economic illiterates, race bating agitators, and pandering populists that only have one thing on their mind: control. Don't worry, as bad as the republicans were, these lefties are by far worse. Dont believe me? Pick up a history book and reference Eastern Europe circa 1950 - 1989. Thats where the "benevolent" environmentalists want to take you. Not forward, but into shackles.
Green is the new Red.
Now mod me down.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
.. to catapult the hydroponically grown wheat back to the Earth?
What the hell are they thinking?!?!
Put a nuclear source up there hanging above our heads like that?
What if by chance something happens to the moon's orbit causing it to plummet into the Earth. If that were to happen and there was a big reactor on it, that could spell disaster!
This space available.
Thorium reactors don't make plutonium. No need for a light water or breeder reactor for it. I'm told that the fission byproducts are an order of magnitude safer as well, but I haven't seen the math for it yet.
Please check Kirk Sorensen's Google Talk about thorium nuclear reactors. And here are the actual slides used in the presentation.
From the Introduction and Basic Principles of thorium based reactors on Kirk's blog: A liquid-fluoride thorium reactor operating only on thorium and using a "start charge" of pure U-233 will produce almost no transuranic isotopes. This is because neutron capture in U-233 (which occurs about 10% of the time) will produce U-234, which will further absorb another neutron to produce U-235, which is fissile. U-235 will fission about 85% of the time in a thermal-neutron spectrum, and when it doesn't it will produce U-236. U-236 will further absorb another neutron to produce Np-237, which will be removed by the fluorination system. But the production rate of Np-237 will be exceedingly low because of all the fission "off-ramps" in its production.
-k
Your average LARGE RV - e.g. a 37 foot trailer with 4 slides - is wired for 50A @ 110VAC (here in the US) - that is 55kW. Many RV parks supply only 30A, not 50A - roughly 33kW.
50A is enough to heat your average RV, using only electric heat, in environments down to about 0C (with low wind), while running lights, TV, and the other accouterments of life.
My 4 bedroom house is wired for 200A@110VAC. Very rarely do I even come close to quarter of that.
Moreover, this is 40kW ALL THE TIME - that's 28800 kW*hr - go look at your (or for many Slashdotters, your mother's) electric bill, and see how many kW*hr you used in the hottest part of the summer.
www.eFax.com are spammers
> Bring on the U.N. sanctions. No one sell pocket protectors to NASA. They might be used for nefarious purposes.
Indeed. I'm virtually certain that 100% of the scientists that invented the atomic bomb used them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's called "Launched mass to orbit is expensive, so safe mass at any cost".
The problem should be clear. In fact, mass to orbit is expensive because launchers are expensive. Aluminium and fuel are cheap. So why are launchers expensive? Because they're built to be as light as possible to leave as much mass as possible for the payload.
OK, there is a lower limit of what you can get away with: Your craft plus payload has to be able to make orbit in the first place. This is not exactly trivial but this was solved and done about 50 years ago. Remember cars from back then?
From this point on high-tech and mass-saving are not what you think they are. The good old Soyuz launcher, flown nearly 2000 times now, is a design from the sixties and is the cheapest way to get your pounds to space. It's *not* light. Comparing its launch mass to its payload, it's heavy. But it is cheap. Any industry that has the plans and can build cars like a VW buggy from the sixties can build a Soyuz launcher. It has turbo-pumps for fuel and oxygen running with 6000 RPM, driven by decomposing HTP, very much like WW II u-boats. You could probably build it in your backyard now.
As I said, aluminum and fuel and oxygen are dirt cheap. Mass-saving is expensive. A Soyuz launch costs about $10 million and this is not only because russian workers get low wages. It's mainly because that thing is so bloody simple and easy to build. There have been many attempts to re-design that rocket to double the payload (which still would it make not exactly state-of-the-art), but invariantly the costs of manufacturing the thing would more than double then, so nothing came out of it.
Couldn't we build 2 lunar stations, on opposing sides of the moon. Where each station is able to generate enough power to operate both stations. The station at the sunny side could also power the one on the dark side. And some power could be stored for the days when both stations are halfway. Store it as heat in the ground, or by making hydrogen,.. whatever
Basically the same sort of problem we have with solar power here on Earth, just daily and not bi weekly like on the moon. Batteries are one possibility-over production during the sunshiny part, storage of power, etc. You'd need something better than a massive big heavy battery bank though, and what that could be on the moon I do not know. Perhaps refining out some gas like that helium and storing it under pressure. Besides that, if it was me, I'd still want two power sources, at least a second as an emergency limited use backup.
Huuuu NASA is not able to install 2.3kW peak solar on the moon, but plays with shooting nuclear reactors through our athmosphere?
Whats the rush to set up a base out there? Or at least spend money where it's needed back here on terra firma.
It's not like the moon is going anywhere.
Then again, perhaps it's not the moon they are worried about. *cough* burning planet *cough*.
Seems like no one have noticed that there is no fission reactor yet. So far just supporting technologies were tested, i.e. they build the Stirling engine with a heat exchanger.
So cool down, and spread a good word about the nuclear energy, so that when the time comes there will be no misinformation and too high blood pressure on neither of sides.
for my back yard.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I actually worked on this project as a summer researcher with the Center for Space Nuclear Research.
Just to put it out there the USA and Russia have already launched nuclear reactors into space. NASA launched the SNAP-10A (System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) in 1965 and it's now dormant due to a permanent shutdown mechanism.
Potential misunderstandings:
1) Radiation from these reactors are NOT going to measurable increase the amount of dose we receive. The distance to the moon is approx 30X the earths diameter and the radiation decreases with distance by 1/R^2. Distance alone reduces the radiation exposure by a factor of 1.59E18. The atmosphere itself provides a shielding effect and reduces the cosmic radiation we get every day. Plainly you receive more of a radiation dose from your TV.
2) The way these reactors are designed inherently safe. The reactors will shut themselves down naturally after the temperature increases beyond the design conditions.
3) Yes some random space matter can strike and destroy a nuclear reactor. If this would happen the reactor would scattered about shutting the reactor down. Also these reactors are not designed so that if they fell back to earth in the worst way possible they couldn't not go critical.
In your case, ignorance doesn't seem that blissful at all.
You do realize, even within the Plutonium family, that there are isotopes that are not suitable for nuclear weapons, right?
Idiot.
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