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Finally! This is one of the few fission uses I'm genuinely excited about. Nuclear-thermal just makes so much sense for in-space propulsion of large vessels compared to chemical rockets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depending on the design, failure during launch can be anywhere from "meh" to "basically high-altitude Chernobyl" — random actinide decay products (and plutonium fuel) are bad, unreacted uranium fuel is mostly a heavy metal hazard rather than a radiation hazard. (Could be worse, but the Orion drive is currently illegal by treaty and hopefully nobody is dumb enough to use that in Earth's ionosphere anyway).
I remember learning that when they started testing atomic bombs (I think?) the nuclear debris in the air spread basically throughout the whole united states and the government tried to keep quiet about it. Something similar will probably happen here if they mess up with the launch. Btw, the video I saw was on Veritasium.
But maybe I remember wrong.
Edit: the video in question is [1] and the conpany was Kodak.
Finally! This is one of the few fission uses I'm genuinely excited about. Nuclear-thermal just makes so much sense for in-space propulsion of large vessels compared to chemical rockets.
I think the obvious concern would be failure scenarios. There will always be failures in space technology. As space expands exponentially (as it is likely to do so in the future), failures will become relatively regular. So the obvious question would be what would happen if a nuclear rocket, with reaction in process, crashed to Earth. Or even if it broke up in the atmosphere.
It's possible that reliability/safety will improve as fast as the launch cadence does, in which case we could see the accident rate staying flat or decreasing.
This might be a good time to review the number of failed rocket launches we've seen in the last few years. Now, imagine them with nuclear materials aboard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember learning that when they started testing atomic bombs (I think?) the nuclear debris in the air spread basically throughout the whole united states and the government tried to keep quiet about it. Something similar will probably happen here if they mess up with the launch. Btw, the video I saw was on Veritasium.
I remember that video; the long story short was that a manufacturer of films for photography noticed that their films had spots on them, they initially thought it was defects, but because they had samples prior to testing, they saw an uptick. But maybe I remember wrong. Edit: the video in question is [1] and the conpany was Kodak. [1] https://youtu.be/7pSqk-XV2QM
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RTGs have been going to space since the 60s [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_...
RTGs do not use fission and do not create fission products. Nuclear fuels are harmless in comparison to Strontium-90 and Cesium-137.
Finally! This is one of the few fission uses I'm genuinely excited about. Nuclear-thermal just makes so much sense for in-space propulsion of large vessels compared to chemical rockets.
US seems to be in a hardware/science renaissance, now that there is a new Cold War enemy, and manufacturing and research are being brought back to US.
Cold war = rocket science, new fuels, materials science, major computing advancements, supply chain changes, innovation, science hype, broad optimism
I know most of this is happenstance and that peace time doesn't itself cause lackluster development, but it is interesting and palpable.
I was so down on 2000 - 2020, but the decade ahead is exciting, and I'm filled with motivation.
The more adoption of nuclear technologies with practical application, the better.
That’s an odd thing to say. Almost as if you’re in favour of nuclear for nuclear’s sake? Plenty of people have reasonable reservations about use of nuclear, not least the social /political ones of where to store waste that are still mostly unsolved. Blasting fission cores into space on rockets with fairly high failure rates in absolute terms seems like a fairly fine balance to strike?
Or to put it another way, at what point should we throw a Hail Mary in the energy demand game?
This might be a good time to review the number of failed rocket launches we've seen in the last few years. Now, imagine them with nuclear materials aboard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember that video; the long story short was that a manufacturer of films for photography noticed that their films had spots on them, they initially thought it was defects, but because they had samples prior to testing, they saw an uptick. But maybe I remember wrong. Edit: the video in question is [1] and the conpany was Kodak. [1] https://youtu.be/7pSqk-XV2QM
Not sure about camera film, but there's certainly a need for 'low-background steel' for several applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel