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NASA Seeks Nuclear Power For Mars (scientificamerican.com)
New submitter joshtops shares a report from Scientific American: As NASA makes plans to one day send humans to Mars, one of the key technical gaps the agency is working to fill is how to provide enough power on the Red Planet's surface for fuel production, habitats and other equipment. One option: small nuclear fission reactors, which work by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power. NASA's technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years, with the aim of demonstrating the system at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas. Testing is due to start in September and end in January 2018. The last time NASA tested a fission reactor was during the 1960s' Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP, which developed two types of nuclear power systems. The first system -- radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs -- taps heat released from the natural decay of a radioactive element, such as plutonium. RTGs have powered dozens of space probes over the years, including the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. The second technology developed under SNAP was an atom-splitting fission reactor. SNAP-10A was the first -- and so far, only -- U.S. nuclear power plant to operate in space. Launched on April 3, 1965, SNAP-10A operated for 43 days, producing 500 watts of electrical power, before an unrelated equipment failure ended the demonstration. The spacecraft remains in Earth orbit.
Whoever came up with that acronym must love 80s music
https://youtu.be/z33tH-JdPDg
No, troll, this isn't simply using 1960s technology. I understand the sarcasm in your post, but I still see that you're a troll.
There are challenges with fission reactors in space that don't exist on Earth. Specifically, you have to cool the fuel to prevent a meltdown. On Earth, this is accomplished by pumping large amounts of water through the reactor. The steam is used to generate electricity, but it also keeps the fuel cool. We generally build nuclear plants by bodies of water such as rivers, and the excess heat is transported downstream. There isn't an easy solution for dissipating heat in space. There isn't such an easy way to use conduction, convection, and advection to dissipate heat.
It's worthwhile to figure out how to do this, but it's not simply using 1960s technology. You, sir, are a troll trying to draw out people to argue with you.
No, NASA is very sane and totally right to use nuclear power for this use case. Nuclear power for earth side, widespread usage is utter lunacy due to the eternal waste, the immense costs and lastly the inherent incalculable dangers. Idiocy like thorium reactors and reprocessing are insane, not this.
For a small bootstrap colony or a science station on mars, nuclear power is by far the best option right now: proven and fairly reliable, small (think reactors from subs), easy to transport and set up (you have to insert the fuel rods on mars, transporting a mostly inert reactor). These small reactors are then used to build the infrastructure and bootstrap industry on mars so they can produce their own industrial base with solar power cells or hopefully fusion power or whatever else one can use on mars.
So as long as the nuclear reactors are limited in power and numbers, this is the exactly right solution until fusion reactors are possible.
Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise. Mars is the politically stated goal for NASA because anything else requires 5 minutes explanation to idiot politicians who require "announcables".
Stating that their goal is Mars satisfies that requirement and allows them to spend money on developing heavy launchers, technology for in situ resource utilization and other technologies for long duration missions.
They should talk to the Russians, they have much more experience with nuclear reactors in space. Been doing it for decades.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
One of the few upsides of a manned mission to Mars is that we can send all the infrastructure there before the trigger is pulled to lift any humans off of Earth. We can make sure it arrives safely, and works, rather than having to send it on the same trip as the astronauts. Even if the solar cells, ice purifiers, and hydroponics work at a rate too slow to keep up with human consumption, they could be designed to operate when noone is there, to stockpile enough resources to last the duration of a human visit. Food silos, batteries, water tanks, and a habitat can be sent and filled up beforehand. Assuming everything but the seeds were sterilized, I wonder if the resultant food could be preserved indefinitely on Mars; ya know, until the humans show up and spread their microbiome everywhere.
If a colony is dependent on regular shipments of fissile material, that could cause problems, particularly if a shipment blows up/gets its launch delayed, or if the colony desires independence. Hawking et al suggest that we should get a Mars colony in part so that we wouldn't be doomed by a third world war; however, if said colony belonged to one of the major world powers, it's much more likely to be targeted. China already has tested weapons that can destroy satellites, I wouldn't put it past them to use a weapon that would destroy their enemy's Mars colony.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Yes, why not just buy a few from the Russians? It'd save a lot of trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise.
So?
The arguments for not going to Mars pretty much boils down to nihilism so why post at all? It is not like anything matters anyway.
Or to bring in a quote from popular culture:
Why would NASA put effort into Uranium reactors when Thorium is so much more promising?
It doesn't get more "do-over" than an entire fucking planet. If you really must do something nuclear on it, why use the old shit?
NASA should use COAL!
!!! Trump !!!
... for a lot of power situations, not just space. However the 60s CND hippie generation have managed to turn it into a bogieman (not helped of course by Chernobyl caused by a lack of training and maintenance on a reactor that was a poor design to start with). Sadly the younger generation seems to have swallowed this meme wholesale without actually checking the facts (eg France has generated around 50% of its power from nuclear without serious incident since the 1960s). So good luck to Nasa getting nuclear reactors on Mars without idiots demonstrating at the gates of Canaveral.
The old satellites that were built to last used nuclear power. They still operate decades after the missions are finished despite being quite old and obsolete.
Meanwhile, new and expensive satellites built to modern accounting and eco standards can barely last the duration of the mission. As soon as the objective is accomplished, the last semi-useful thing they can do is crash into the planet or comet and we fake it's a great thing!
NASA should use COAL!
!!! Trump !!!
With it we can make Mars great again!
!!! Trump !!!
Otherwise, you have to change the music from "Hot stuff".
RUSSIANS!!!!!
We already have relatively small pressurized water reactors. It seems like a reactor that could power a submarine would be the right size for a small colony of people. Is that still too physically large, or would the problem be the quantity of water/coolant required for operation? Maybe they could figure out a way to include the human waste processing function in the reactor system? i.e. cool the reactor by peeing on it.
"Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise. "
Yup, there is absolutely no reason at all to go to Mars other than stroking it. Anything left that can be learned there can still be learned by unmanned Landers.
Antarctica may only have a tenth of the surface area of Mars, but Man can and have lived on it. Hell, anybody can sail there with a decently supplied Yacht, say a 10 Meter Beneteau, from New Zealand or Argentina. Flags have been planted all along the Antarctica coastlines, but nobody now there really gives a damn. It's too cold. But it is entirely possible to get a Sunburn there during those months when the Sun never sets.
The Air is breathable, and there is an unlimited supply of drinkable Water. The cooling needed for Nuclear Reactors is not an issue.
Yes, due to your Global Warming, Antarctica is shrinking, but it is a Continent after all under all that Ice. It can only shrink so far. Assuming that it shrinks down to 5 Million square miles, at a sparse density of a 1000 people a square mile, the density of a New Jersey including the farms, that's room for 5 Billion people, give or take.
Going Off-Planet is too damn stupid to be seriously considered. You have barely even begun to ruin the On-Planet, although you are making excellent progress. Leave Mars alone.
-Marvin
Uranium works, has been demonstrated in space many times, and has a bunch of people who understand reactor design. Thoriuem is a pie in the sky idea that hasn't been demonstrated in proudction, hasn't been used commercially, and doesn't have any experts in reactor design. Oh yeah, its harder to find, extract, process, enrich, use and dispose of, and its resistance to nuclear meltdown doesn't have the same value in space.
Research & exploration are NASAs main missions and there is a need for around 500Kw in order to produce Methane & O2 for return flights from Mars that would be difficult to produce otherwise (at least on initial missions).
Spending billions on ILS launchers that have no mission is insanity (though Nasa spends the money it's the Senate that directs them to do so and micromanages the budget so that they must spread it around all 50 states).
It's interesting that the SNAP-10A is still up there as almost all opposition to the use of reactors in space is "What it it crashes on launch" by people that refuse to believe that we can build containment vessels sufficient to not spill the reactants even after a failed launch. I wonder, given that SNAP-10A is already in orbit, and didn't stop working due to any fault of the reactor itself whether it's fuel could be recovered to power a modern reactor. Probably not as it certainly wasn't engineered to to be disassembled easily, especially in space and things like vacuum welding may be an issue but it'd be a great hack if they could.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
"You could use sodium or mercury in space."
Mercury is already in space, near the Sun, so that would save money... ;)
Eh?
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/24/business/patents-nuclear-battery-converts-reactor-waste-products.html
http://www.rexresearch.com/nucell/nucell.htm
http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/strange-life-and-stranger-death-paul-brown-case-another-smart-guy-doing-dumb-thing
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
And now what, making news for planing to use tech that's been used since the 60s?
We were building reactors on other planets in the '60s? I guess I really wasn't paying attention.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Hmm, doing what amounts to a controlled crash (possibly uncontrolled) on Mars with a fission reactor. What could possibly go wrong?
We already have relatively small pressurized water reactors.
Not a grand idea when you cannot have people monitoring it onsite 24/7 who are able to effect repairs. Requires high pressure piping and containment (heavy and $$) which increases the problems if there is a loss of coolant incident (not a trivial consideration). Lots of problematic failure modes not easily reconciled to space travel. Plus there is the fact that you need water which Mars has but not in abundance or easily accessible. You don't want to ship the water there
It seems like a reactor that could power a submarine would be the right size for a small colony of people.
Water as a coolant works great on a submarine when you are literally in an ocean of it. Not so obviously great of an idea on a planet where water is substantially harder to come by.
Maybe they could figure out a way to include the human waste processing function in the reactor system? i.e. cool the reactor by peeing on it.
??? That's like trying to put out a forest fire by peeing on it.
Here's my conspiracy theory.
While they may see potential value for Mars, I see this as a way to acclimatize people to the idea that nuclear is a safe option. Where NASA is in the industry and previous accidents aside, the American public, as a whole, still regards NASA as being the same, awesome NASA that it was in the 50s.
That being the case, if this can bring nuclear into the public consciousness as something that's good and safe and useful, then it won't be about Mars, it will be about how we can "leverage what was learned from developing reactors usable in the harsh Martian landscape for use safely at home".
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
nasa, always, good luck. fyi, i want to reserve a spot on the 1st golf course off #9 tee. 1/2 $ drinks for the 1st 99 members.
they rehired homer to run the nukes.
Research and exploration is done by robots. Why would they need a return flight?
1) the US is not allowed to reprocess its fuel. So, we are legally obligated to treat useful fuel as waste.
2) The next generation of reactors can use even more "waste" as fuel, but due to unscientific regulations and fears the ROI of building a plant is higher than as natural gas plant.
3) If nuclear was held to the same standards as other industrial hazards it would be much cheaper. Do you know what the largest source of commercial radiation to the public is? Flying - yet we don't regulate it or even measure it. Do you know what the largest overall man made exposure is? Medical. People accept nuclear medicine because of the benefits, but fail to count the benefits of nuclear power.
4) Nuclear waste is contained. How great would it be if all your waste was easy to collect into nice small stable packages? You can do that with nuclear. Nuclear contamination is one of the easiest hazards to monitor for which lends itself to being easily managed.
you're a cunt.
Where do you think they get radioisotopes? They dig them up out of the ground. They are all over the Earth already, and the same with Mars. Now, except for a few places, they are very sparse. One of the big problems with going to Mars is protecting yourself from radiation. Without a magnetic field, Mars is bombarded with cosmic radiation constantly. I don't think spilling a few pounds of Uranium on the surface would make a difference.
"Charcoal works, has been demonstrated many times, and has a bunch of people who understand fireplace design."
It's not what you typed, but it's what I heard as I read it.
Of all places, is not NASA one of those where we dare to try new things?
"It's interesting that the SNAP-10A is still up there as almost all opposition to the use of reactors in space is "What it it crashes on launch" by people that refuse to believe that we can build containment vessels sufficient to not spill the reactants even after a failed launch."
SNAP-10A did not failed at launch. It failed once in a stable orbit. And there is it, still in LEO.
Maybe we can build such containment vessels able to survive a launch fail in the very first seconds but an uncontrolled reentry just a few minutes too late and no practical containment vessel is going to avoid a spill.
"Research and exploration is done by robots. Why would they need a return flight?"
It's destined for the Trump voters who believe in "slave children" on Mars.
Hello sheldonbot.
Some of us are intent on leaving our parents the basement (the earth) as not all exploration and/or interactions can be performed remotely. Should you be one of those pretexting that "it's too expensive and useless", then I reply that so are many other domains in which we spend so muck more: Cosmetics, recreational drugs, etc. I won't stop you from your face creams and getting high/drunk all the time, now move out of the way and let me and those like me move onto exploring and then colonizing other areas in the Solar system.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Can't tell if elegant trolling or truly can't look far enough ahead to know what's coming. I will assume it's the former, and say "nice work"
Progress, normally starts with a lets see if if we can do this.
Once we know how to get there, then we can determine if there is a value on returning. Sure we romantically see a Sci-Fi future of a Mars colony, however Mars at its best is Earth at its worst, for us. There is value in protecting or species in expanding out, a Mars colony will help hedge our bets on survival. A solar eruption has a slim chance on hitting both Earth and Mars. Also having two extinction level asteroids hitting both Earth and Mars at the same time.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
We really need a real space station and a real moonbase. Decades of spending billions and we don't have crap except a bunch of affluent people getting richer.
Our dreams of space have become corrupt nightmares.
So you can hear the voices too! They give me lithium so I can't hear the voices, but I only pretend I take it.
Without a magnetic field, Mars is bombarded with cosmic radiation constantly. I don't think spilling a few pounds of Uranium on the surface would make a difference.
If you spill it in a place we plan to use for human habitation eventually, and you manage to scatter it in the process, it'll be a damned shame. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use a nuke anyway, but it has to be designed such that if it does make a mess, it makes a very small and self-contained mess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Operating a nuclear power station in space comes with some interesting engineering challenges.
The biggest is heat rejection. The vast majority of a nuclear powered spaceship will be radiator, with the rest being mostly shielding (if a human crew is on board) and only a tiny bit is the nuclear reactor itself.
You can't just dump heat into the atmosphere as water and take on fresh cooling water. You have to radiate the heat into space and that is an efficient (temperate of the cold reservoir is low) but very slow process.
The situation is not much better on mars which has only a thin atmosphere and no cooling water.....
Space Corps. in 2018. The timing is not coincidental. They want to get their nuclear retaliation option up in space so terrestrially bound militaries will become completely their bitch.
I am sure Russia, China, India and the EU are all rushing to do the same. Maybe Japan too, although I question if they have the resources to pull it off now.
WW3 is going to be a lot more devastating and possibly one-sided than people think, but only because most people didn't believe it would involve orbital retaliation and infrastructure.
That drawing off of heat is not just "to prevent a meltdown." The heat represents the output energy itself, which to be efficiently converted into electricity has to be dumped into as low-temperature a heat sink as possible. We use large bodies of water as heat sinks on Earth for ALL thermal power plants because the temperature differential is the greatest.
Nobody is going to go to Mars ever. There is no money to pay for it. The various proposals are just a mishmash of unfundable of half-baked "dorm room" talk. Real shit is crumbling all around us. We are living during the collapse of modern civilization, and we are no more going to Mars than the ancient Romans were.
Look at the tribal wars raging in Afghanastan and Syria and Mexico and Columbia and Venezuela and the Phillipines and Europe. Look at the primative tribesman inhabitting US cities. That is your future, not Mars.
Am I the only person who noticed controversial info on Ban Nuclear Power in Space?
It will never happen. At least not for a very very very long time. We have many places on earth that are not possible to be independent right now that are magnitudes easier and more habitable.
If they really want to play around, they should try it here on earth first as a proof of concept, preferably long term. The whole failed biodome experiment being a good example. Heck, put in the the Arctic or Antarctic and see how it fairs, or even just a very harsh remote region. Probably also be magnitudes cheaper to try that anyway. Heck turn it into a reality show and maybe it'll pay for itself these days...
Thermal radiators have been a part of spacecraft for decades. A significant portion of ISSs external equipment is devoted towards that end. No doubt they're not as good at it as terrestrial methods that can sink it back into the environment (air, water, ground) but they work. A fission generator would simply need to be scaled to fit the maximum thermal dissipation potential of its radiators. Making them fail-safe might be a bit difficult (continued dissipation of maximum heat potential despite power/control loss), especially in a compact form-factor but it should be possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control
A small area of the planet being radioactive. But that's ok, with no life as we know it, not much weather to blow stuff around, and lots of land mass, we've got plenty of chances at another try.
"Not much weather"? You mean except for the global dust storms that could distribute fallout far and wide? With dust that sticks to everything like styrofoam peanuts?
Hard to believe but you've just won the most-retarded-/. poster award for the year. Congratz.
How many "tons of lead" are needed for radiation shield of this nuclear reactor?
(remember the tons of lead for the Chernobyl disaster)
Do you want to habitat near to the Mars Poles for extracting massive
water required for this nuclear reactor?
Do you want to drink this radioisotoped water from the nuclear reactor?
How do you obtain uranium fuel rods on Mars?
How do you construct giant metallic radiators for this water-free
nuclear reactor?
They could use peltier thermoelectric plates. All they need to do is put the generated heat on one side and make the other side cold with a flow of wat... I mean with an air fa... never mind.
#DeleteFacebook
Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise.
While flag planting would be a part of it, going to Mars by necessity will have to be more than that. It will have varying amounts of finance, exploration, science, and engineering as drivers. As for whether it makes sense, we're going to disagree about the sensibility of it I think. Nearly all exploration and discovery isn't objectively justifiable prior to the mission. When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic he had no idea what he might find. That's the nature of discovery. Blanket statements that it doesn't make sense are simply not true because you can only know that post-mission.
Mars is the politically stated goal for NASA because anything else requires 5 minutes explanation to idiot politicians who require "announcables".
What is so bad about that? We're feeding their interests in a way that aligns with the goals of exploration. Maybe it's a little disingenuous at times but I think the end justifies the means in this case. It's always like that when you have to go begging for money for a science endeavor.
The scary thing about SNAP-10A is that it's been exposed to decades of bombardment by micrometeorites. It's been shedding parts, literally falling apart, for decades. Using it for parts, ignoring the fact that much of its fuel has decayed to uselessness, means getting close to it to see how bad it is.
We should ask the Russians for advice. They flew their TOPAZ reactors successfully.
Apex predators, like humans, rarely see an extinction level event coming. It's not an exercise in flag planting; It's about redundancy.
You back up your porn to keep it safe, right? I want to make a backup of human civilization.
You'd have a better chance of finding a pirate treasure chest wash up at your feet on the beach than you would finding coal on Mars. Coal is compressed plants. We haven't even been able to find a lone bacterium there yet, much less higher life like plants!
parent: " say a 10 Meter Beneteau"
I'd rather have a 10 inch Prince Albert.
How much of your parents basement (Earth) have you explored or even studied at all? There are always way more people waxing poetically about the human urge to explore than I see when I visit even slightly remote places on Earth. Mars terrain is highly similar to the least popular places on Earth for humans to visit.
Mars is the ultimate armchair explorers destination. Mostly because pretty much nobody is at risk of having their bluff called by an opportunity to go to Mars. But even if someone made them an offer to go, they know they would be confined to various artificial habitats, dinking around with tech toys the whole time.
In other words, mom's basement as usual.
We've had workable fusion power plants that could fit into a walk-in closet for a few years now.
They mostly are being used in military activities.
Fission is so last decade.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yep. There is pretty much no reason for humans to be alive. Really being alive is just one big ego trip. If we could all be like liberals we would all agree that the best thing for people to do is to kill themselves. If everyone would just kill themself at once, we would stop man made climate change. We would also leave a.pristine environment for the animals and stop the environmental destruction of the planet
I subsequently took a closer look at the SNAP-10A design by following the rURL in the extract (I know, I know, actually reading of TFAs, the horrors...).
Snap-10A used a subcritical core that they brought to criticality by positioning beryllium Neutron reflectors and adding a Sodium-Potassium moderator. This all produced heat that was used to power a thermocouple.
I assume that shutting it down was by repositioning the reflectors. Once no longer critical the moderator would have cooled to the point the moderator would solidify in & around the core. micrometeorites may have damaged the surrounding satellite but I really doubt that the core has been exposed and degraded.
The uranium half life is long enough that I doubt that it has degraded to unusability (it's planned critical lifetime was cut short by external factors after all) but recovering it is clearly more expensive than it's worth.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
That NaK moderator is some terrifying stuff. It's a eutectic mixture that's a liquid at room temperature and will spontaneously combust from the moisture in earth air.
I'm stunned they let that fly. Excited, but stunned. :)
I think human kind is not ready to explore and colonize other heavenly bodies, if the given situation on earth requires to keep vital technology secret just to keep the status quo on the mothership intact.
as long as the "haves" value their tiny micro haves on this spec of dust as more valuable then "what's potentially out there" then we can forget any safe and meaningful space exploration.
it's like keeping the keel-sword and sail a secret and sending explorers off with a big grin to peri... errr... discover amerikas in a big row boat.
Apex predators, like humans, rarely see an extinction level event coming. It's not an exercise in flag planting; It's about redundancy.
You back up your porn to keep it safe, right? I want to make a backup of human civilization.
Mars isn't a very good backup site. (Mars has just enough air, gravity and solar radiation to cause problems not enough to solve problems so it's a pretty crappy target over-all. )
Venus would be better (who doesn't like zeppelin cities?), as would some of the larger asteroids.
There's also some promis for Titan but that relies on solving the problems being that close to Saturn causes.
You should have that checked. Being deluded isn't generally a good life plan.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm late to the party with this, but Atomic Energy Canada designed an Nuclear Battery (self contained low maintenance uranium reactor) that would output 2400 kW (thermal) or 600 kW (electric).
Might be a starting point for a colony system.
Nuclear Battery (pdf)
How hot do black body thermal radiators on spacecraft run?
That's the cold side of any thermodynamic cycle for power, hot cold side temperatures make for craptacular efficiency.
If you're going to build a nuke for Mars, you would design it to not be started until you got it onto mars and had a _use_ for the waste heat as well as a heat dump (ground loop?).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or an objective observation. Robots have explored the Solar System out to the kuiper belt - and are now leaving it. What part of the solar system have humans explored since we entered the space age?
I assume that shutting it down was by repositioning the reflectors.
The reflectors were held in place by a retaining band anchored by an explosive bolt. When the reflector was ejected from the unit, the reactor could not sustain the nuclear fission reaction and the reactor permanently shut down.
The risks are very calculable.
It is one of the most well known, well quantified risks.
We know more about radiation and its effects than any other carcinogen.
I would implore you to at least audit a course in nuclear engineering to access better tools for evaluating nuclear power.
I think you would find it is very attractive in terms of risk.
Many of my coworkers switch to the nuclear side of production because it is cleaner and safer than the non-nuclear side of the house.
That's not exactly true. Thorium is abundant here (not sure about Mars) and naturally fails safe as it is a solid and never melts down. Plenty of experiments have been done to validate its viability. The real reason it gains no traction is well entrenched industries and their ties to politicians.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Reasoning through absurdities just proves that you're very bad at reasoning. I've lived on 3 continents and visited 5 but that has little to do with my drive to see mankind explore and colonize the solar system.
Your argument that Mars is the "ultimate explorers destination" is also pitifully weak as a greater even more widespread dream is visiting other stars but that is far beyond our capacities. Mars, isn't as with the progress in launchers we are on the cusp of visiting and even colonizing Mars.
However it is true that many basement dwelling cheetos munching ACs such as yourself cannot see beyond their creature comforts to see the draw that living on another planet has for many of us.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
and you cannot produce 1 Watt. They probably meant something like 500 Wh or similiar.
I'm not really sure what your point was.