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Also interesting that they didn’t pick a US nuclear company. This is obviously a boon to the contract winner. These decisions always have a political aspect to it. What does this signal?
Edit: wow, massive oversight. I thought this was NASA. Nevermind! Still, the Rolls Royce choice isn’t obvious to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right of course. Bad choice of words. I was meaning the the moon's "Permanently Shadowed Regions" [1] [1] https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/97/the-moons-permanently-sha...
While solar obviously would not work there, is there any compelling reason to need nuclear power in those permadark locations?
I'd still like to know how they plan for a potential explosion of the space craft carrying the fuel inside the atmosphere. They better have a good story on that. Even if the rocket breaks up and the fuel reaches ground in perfectly sealed containers, that still doesn't mean the danger is over.
This is in fact safer to launch than past space missions such as Pioneer, Voyager, and Cassini. Those used radiothermal generators that were far more radioactive and hazardous than a fresh reactor core.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US Navy made a nuclear reactor to power an Antarctic base and it was so expensive and failure prone they went back to diesel. https://theconversation.com/remembering-antarcticas-nuclear-...
This is a funny attempted dunk on US Navy nuclear considering they operate a fleet of nuclear powered submarines and warships.
… but why Rolls Royce? Also interesting that they didn’t pick a US nuclear company. This is obviously a boon to the contract winner. These decisions always have a political aspect to it. What does this signal? Edit: wow, massive oversight. I thought this was NASA. Nevermind! Still, the Rolls Royce choice isn’t obvious to me.
I'd still like to know how they plan for a potential explosion of the space craft carrying the fuel inside the atmosphere. They better have a good story on that. Even if the rocket breaks up and the fuel reaches ground in perfectly sealed containers, that still doesn't mean the danger is over.
This article does not cover what I consider to be two key issues: - how to boost the mass of something like a shielded nuclear reactor to the moon? - how to extract the heat energy from the reactor? turbines (more mass)?
are there any fissionable materials that can be refined on the moon?