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."

Comments

I know it's democracy and will of the people, but

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why not have a petition for something USEFUL?

[Jeremy Erwin]

One step at a time. It's more useful than a Death Star.

Re:Why not have a petition for something USEFUL?

[ArcadeMan]

If hookers paid by the state existed, YOU would get screwed.

Re:stahp

[EmagGeek]

This.

Seriously, anyone who thinks the white house actually considers any of these petitions is incredibly naive and impressionable, which is, of course, the whole point - making a bunch of naive, impressionable voters believe the administration actually gives a fuck what they think.

Re:The original...

[TubeSteak]

Being 40+ years out of date, I imagine they'll have to spend billions to repeat the original work,

The real cost to ressurect old aerospace technology is in remaking the molds and figuring out the exact composition of the materials used.
If NASA saved any of the old molds/dies or documents, it'll save them a lot of money and effort.

And I'd like to point out that "out of date" is a questionable statement when we're talking about rocket technology.
The R&D has already been done and it's not like the old designs deteriorate with age.
Computers aside, most of what's done today isn't very different from 50 year old rocketry.

Re:Why not have a petition for something USEFUL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so.

Hookers put out reliably when you pay them. Wives do not.

Re:Why not have a petition for something USEFUL?

[cusco]

That's because in the US people are trained to always go with the lowest bidder and to only look at the short term return on an investment. My dad was a high-quality remodeler for many years, and it was always a challenge for him to make a customer understand that the guy with the lowest bid was not always the best choice.

Re:Why not have a petition for something USEFUL?

[cusco]

Indeed. Annoying as hell that they decided to fix one flawed process by instituting another even more flawed process.