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Nuclear Rocket Petition On White House Website
RocketAcademy writes "A petition on the White House website is calling for the United States to rapidly develop a nuclear thermal rocket engine. Nuclear rockets are a promising technology, but unless NASA develops a deep-space exploration ship such as Johnson Space Center's Nautilus X, a nuclear rocket would be wasted. Launching nuclear rockets may pose regulatory and political problems as well. Practical applications may depend on mining uranium or thorium on the Moon."
Like free hookers / pot?
Because the masses don't understand technology, its applications, and safe mankind benefiting uses.
I don't blame the Illuminati.
Anyway I would benevolently ram 2-trillion down the throats of mankind in space exploratory science. At the barrel of a gun or laser or sonic weapon at this point. It seems to be what people want out of their governments.
A petition on the White House website can be written by anyone, about anything. Heck, you could even write a petition calling for the United States to develop a Death Star.
Is this going to be the next form of slashvertisement?
The NERVA test engine is on display at Johnson Space Center, as I understand it.
Being 40+ years out of date, I imagine they'll have to spend billions to repeat the original work, but I'd hope that the fact that we already built a working nuclear rocket would mean that developing a new one wouldn't be overwhelmingly difficult.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
In this case I believe the judgement of professionals at NASA is worth more than of some random petition signers. Give NASA a bigger budget and let them decide how to spend it.
I remember how well the deathstar petition worked: the white house, in the paper today, said that they would not work on it.
can we stop with the white house petition spam? the petitions generally get more and more silly and the few that are reasonable never get more than a nice token response from the white house
Nuclear rockets have a much higher specific impulse than chemical rockets, which is what makes them attractive for space exploration (this is not the only thing to consider though). However launching them from earth would poses some risks. A failure on launch could result in releasing radioactive fission products over large areas. The US and USSR did a good bit of research on these decades ago. Some interesting info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Maybe it's entrepreneurs you should be consulting. From the article: "One of the more interesting concepts from this period did not come from NASA but from a model company called MPC."
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I would really like to be able to vote against some of the stupid ideas on the White House web site. It would help to have a crowd function to weed out some of the wackier ideas.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Signing those petitions is pissing in the wind.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I like "rapidly developing and deploying" Nuclear Technlogy. Sounds like that won't cause any problems at all. Typicall...
Somehow it all brings Tom Lehrer back to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYW50F42ss8
I don't know, I'm still despondent over the response about building a Death-star. I really thought blowing up planets was their policy.
No, the United States of America is a democratic republic(started as a republic, but the 17th Amendment, including how states, which are sovereign entities and thus equal to the national government, hold referendums and such). We elect representatives, who hold authority to make governmental decisions on out behalf. It is a generally held, but false belief that the US is a democracy; democracies are a farce, at best(read Federalist number 10).
Authority and power are derived from the citizens of the US, but we allow our representatives make decisions that aren't strictly forbidden in the US Constitution, and to a lesser extent, federal/state laws(the US Constitution is the ultimate legal document in the entire US system of governments).
Nuclear thermal rockets still require an exhaustible, usually liquid propellant source.
"we the people" white house petitions are perceived as being nothing more than hollywood babel.
Do you really think there are 25,000 people who have any clue about this subject matter of the petition?
Imagine the "Death Star" petition and the white house response. if that ain't hollywood... what is.
Here is one for contrast: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/provide-each-taxpayer-independent-voice-where-taxes-they-pay-are-be-allocated-and-used-all-tax/cxBlXQht
lets prove the point.
If the first sentence of this article is accurate, Mars should be a primary target for off-world fission fuel. It even tells you where to mine.
Personally, I think a Nuclear powered electric generator would be a better option. Although it wouldn't be used to get a rocket off the ground, it would just be used for in space propulsion only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electric_rocket
Just because the white house itself may not be able to actually perform the action requested by the 30,000 signers, it nonetheless spreads populace ideas well throughout the population. I wasn't even aware this issue is on the minds of anyone and I'm glad to learn about it through the petitioning system.
Perhaps other governing bodies or peoples will be reading these petitions, taking them seriously, and actually be able to do something about them.
Enough of this namby-pamby nuclear rocket talk. What we need is Project Orion to be restarted. Imagine lifting oil-tanker sized craft from the ground into space using only a few hundred nuclear bombs, what could possibly go wrong?
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
Being 40+ years out of date, I imagine they'll have to spend billions to repeat the original work, but I'd hope that the fact that we already built a working nuclear rocket would mean that developing a new one wouldn't be overwhelmingly difficult.
If you hire big bloated corrupt incompetent defense contractors it is guaranteed to take longer than the original and costs BILLIONS more:
Remember that all the above was in response to the destruction of Orbiter Columbia during reentry ten years ago. Oh, for Constellation haters: the Ares-I 1st stage now exists (ATK has test fired several of them and has essentially finished it .... they are just optimizing and characterizing now) and it will fly as part of the SLS system...... now if we just had an Orion and an upperstage with a J-2 derived engine......
The nuclear engine is a great thing..... we developed it in the sixties and even ran them at a test site in the desert..... but if you hire some big aerospace corporation that has been sucking on the government teet for decades and is used to delivering defective garbage to the taxpayer, demanding more for that garbage than was originally bid, and being rewarded by being offered new projects ..... well you're just gonna spend billions and either get nothing or get junk. (the normal pattern is that you spend billions and years and then eventually cancel the program so the taxpayers get nothing for the money but a few desktop display models...... google X-20, X-33, X-38, OTV, NASP, A-12 ....)
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
Someone wake me up when we get to the 21st century tech.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Just what empirical evidence do you have that spending billions of tax dollars on "addressing climate change" would be "useful"? (aside from arguments over whether the change is real and/or whether man is a significant cause and/or is capable of significant mitigation (and the economics of any proposed mitigation))
Oh, and did you really just put "addressing climate change" and "having a budget" into the same sentence? really?
Those petitions are fun and the W.H. response to the Death Star petition was actually funny...... but ...... the real point of the petitions was to fool the Presidents young internet-active "social media" addicts that he was one of them and was listening to them.
He probably never sees most..... and the few that he sees are probably presented to him so he can laugh at how stupid his followers are. The punch line on this joke will hit in 25 years when his by-then grown-up supporters realize that the TRILLIONS of dollars of new debt he heaped upon them and their kids has made them the 1st generation of Americans ever to be so abused by their predecessors that they will spend their entire working lives paying the interest on the maxed-out national credit card. They will have a lower standard of living than their parents ..... and Social Security and Medicare (which those people will have payed into their entire working lives) will have collapsed and will provide them nothing or next-to-nothing. Those trillions of dollars did not build a new 21st century power grid, or provide national high-speed rail service, or national fiber optic internet service, or do a massive upgrade in other infrastructure like repair of all our old bridges..... it mostly went to things like supporting the pensions of the unions who supported Obama, expanding the food stamps program to sign-up as many people as possible, etc. Most of the "green energy" money "invested" went to businesses owned by Obama campaign contributors, many of who pocketed the cash and then shuttered those "businesses"
This country was founded as a Republic, it is wrongly promoted as a Democracy but in actuality it has become an Oligarchy. And when it gets right down to it, its about money. So where do you want your taxes spent or do you typically go into a store and hand the cashier your money and take whatever they give you? How about we the people take control of budgeting and accounting by each of us saying where to allocate the tax funding we individually supply our employee government with? That way the representatives can actually literally financially know how to represent us in this republic. Income tax shouldn't be anything more than a similar percentage of what sales tax is, giving everyone say in what teamwork benefit generating way their taxes are to be used. Vote to hire who is best qualified to optimize the team work benefit generation of taxpayers sum intents. And its side effect of self esteem in knowing you are actively participating in teamwork benefits you share in. Of course you can select to let the government decide where to use your taxes and here the voters can help to determine use.
Can it really be this simple? Occums razor... yes!
But who believe the government is really listening or that this crowd sourcing can work? Personally I'll be totally amazed if this petition https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/provide-each-taxpayer-independent-voice-where-taxes-they-pay-are-be-allocated-and-used-all-tax/cxBlXQht gets enough signers to even just be searchable on the site (150) much more so if it gets enough to just see how the Obama Administration responds to dismiss it.
...in a sealed container. No risk at all. Unpack in space and add to the ship.
Nuclear Thermal Rockets can have a higher efficiency than than conventional chemical rockets, but it's not as much as you might think. There's a limitation that to have a higher exhaust velocity in a thermal rocket, the exhaust needs to be hotter. And it can only be so much hotter before your reactor starts becoming molten rather than a solid. Which means that efficiency tops out at a bit less than double the exhaust velocity of conventional rockets.
Now, that's still useful, if you can get enough thrust to get up off of the planet (and to overcome the weight of the reactor in the process), then you might be able to lift quite a bit more into orbit. Except the petition is for an NTR that would only operate in space. And in space, where you don't really have to worry about the amount of thrust, and your speed is limited by your fuel and your exhaust velocity, things like ion drives can reach efficiencies an order of magnitude higher, or more. Which means, an NTR in space only wouldn't be as useful, compared to nuclear-electric or solar-electric propulsion.
I suppose an NTR not used for Earth surface to orbit might still be useful in landing or taking off from other objects. Really, that's where its strength would be, if you can get it to have high enough thrust, then it would be useful for getting things into orbit and back, as a surface-to-orbit ship. But as far as orbit-to-orbit ships go, ion drives and other electric propulsion can get a lot more speed out of the same tank of propellant.
http://wh.gov/Ec38
I know that the President cannot change the term limits, but would like to hear from the White House anyway. Only takes a minute to sign it.
Thanks
the reason this hasn't been developed is the united nations has a traty banning nuclear weapons in space of which the usa signed.
its why the orion space craft that basically had nuclear explosions out its butt to move it were scrapped.
move along nut bars next try
We have energy shortages here, why would we waste fissible materials on this? We need to solve problems on the ground first before we consider using limited resources that will be spent in space with no possibility of recycling.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Nuclear rockets have a much higher specific impulse than chemical rockets.
Solar Thermal has the exact same higher specific impulse, because both heat up Hydrogen to produce thrust. The only difference is the heat source. Solar Thermal is lighter than Nuclear Thermal (reactors are heavy, and require shielding), and completely avoids all the issues with Nuclear (protests, accidents). The only place to consider Nuclear Thermal these days is if you are going to Jupiter or beyond. Jupiter has intense radiation belts, so extra shielding is a moot point, and beyond that distance sunlight gets pretty weak.
Source: Me. I'm a rocket scientist, and writing a space systems engineering book: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods
There's tons of thorium right here on earth. Mining it on the moon sounds pretty impractical.
But it is quite a bit more than that in countries south of UK! Especially if you have air conditioning, the traditional light bulbs put you in the absurd situation of using energy both to heat and cool the room at the same time... Another thing is that the light bulbs in typical lighting fixtures are inefficient as heaters. Most of the heat goes and stays near the ceiling, which is not where most people spend their time. Even ignoring that, direct electric heating is usually more expensive than other heat sources. (This of course depends on where you live).
By the way, I'm from Finland, so from my point of view the UK is one of those balmy southern European countries. And I have gradually replaced most of the bulbs in my house with compact fluorescents and LEDs. The latter have come down in price in recent years, and solve the worst annoyance of compact fluorescents: they turn instantly on with full power.
Is there some fundamental reason why ion engines cannot have a higher thrust, assuming you have the energy available (like from a nuclear reactor)?
I wonder how long do we have before they stop e-Petition completely. e-Petition is asking awkward/unrealistic questions. We already had a request of building a Death Star.
Oh dear, another one of these.
No, the United States of America is a democratic republic(started as a republic, but the 17th Amendment, including how states, which are sovereign entities and thus equal to the national government, hold referendums and such).
The USA is a democracy by definition. Basing its legitimacy off of a constitution makes it a republic. Commonly seen as republics are also oligarchies, constitutional monarchies, elective monarchies (see Malaysia) and often in general aristocracies.
We elect representatives, who hold authority to make governmental decisions on out behalf. It is a generally held, but false belief that the US is a democracy; democracies are a farce, at best(read Federalist number 10).
Let's ignore the USA for a second, which democracies are a farce and in what context? Aren't there working half-direct democracies (e.g. Switzerland) and how were the Greek city-state democracies a farce?
As for the Federalist Paper No. 10: I'm not a citizen of the USA, so why should I bother with a niche redefinition of a commonly used term, especially if it only applies to a vanishingly small fraction (1 out of many) of democracies and republics in history? Speak such that the world understands you!
Authority and power are derived from the citizens of the US, but we allow our representatives make decisions that aren't strictly forbidden in the US Constitution, and to a lesser extent, federal/state laws(the US Constitution is the ultimate legal document in the entire US system of governments).
So you have, just by putting together the definitions in the order you list them yourself, a democratic representative Republic. Plus a Federation.
You've been modded correctly, consider this the flame you were baiting for.
Seams to me that Solar-PV-ion drive is the only real way to go..
Anything else is going to run into material thermal limits needed to provide the directional trust vector needed.
As for powering a moon base. Better to string a HVDC line near the poles, and collect the electrical energy produced energy from half a dozen PV installations. No moving parts, redundancy, no refueling. Most of the elements needed for construction in abundant supply.
While I agree with the modding, I'd flip that around - the US is a republic by definition; it uses (and has always used) representative democratic principles to elect its representatives in that republic. There has not been a democracy (form of government) since ancient Athens because, like true communism (and I mean not the dictatorships we have called communism), it doesn't scale well.
Sure, but the petition will probably go to NASA for an explanation as to why they aren't seriously pursuing it. I'd like to see that explanation, just for my own scientific and engineering curiosity.
I'm sorry, but this is something I have to post...
Ok, now imagine the 45-year-old guy and his friend who develop a nuclear propulsion rocket core in their basement and announce its creation to the U.S. gov't.
I'll let your minds take the funny from here.
"But we were helping the government in its endeavors!"
I hope they know that RPF has the patent on such things!
@peetm