141–150 of 187 posts
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Post WWII understood how terrible war was. Post 90s those that experienced it in mass were going extinct. We forgot what fascism did to the past and too many are embracing it again.
Or the definition of fascism has expanded to cover all one's political enemies.
Why does the definition need expanded?
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.
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>The reactor activates for the first time after the initial orbital launch. So they're going to launch an untested reactor into orbit without even turning it on first? Getting a reactor up and running is hard enough on the ground. I would expect any reactor to have had thousands of hours of testing and tweaking before being placed on the launch pad; that is the process for military boats and we have 60 years of exper…
> that is the process for military boats and we have 60 years of experience in that environment Totally different reactor designs.
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> Or even if it broke up > in the atmosphere. The atmosphere we've already detonated over 500 nuclear weapons in?
Nuclear weapons testing was mostly designed to maximize power output by burning up as much fissile material as possible in one big explosion. Conversely, it was meant to minimize fallout. A broken nuclear reactor (no nuclear explosion) would be the opposite: lots and lots of fallout (broken reactor bits) scattered over a wide area. The radioactivity from a broken nuclear rocket could be more dangerous than that from…
Also you can presumably shield reactors to survive reentry or even ship the fuel in multiple such reentry proof containers. And of course longer term build these in space, given nuclear propulsion is basically in space only anyway given its characteristics.
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How often do failed rockets, or any space debris, fall on cities?
We might see more obvious direct human impact from debris landed in cities, but nuclear debris falling into the ocean or land that isn't densely populated by humans still has plenty of bad side effects.
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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.
The solution to this is to build it in the moon from moon rocks and send it by maglev trains. Full scale spaceships can be 3D printed in parts, assembled on-orbit, and Dragon/Starliner class rowboats can be used to board it.
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Isn't there a way you can shoot the whole apparatus into the sky while it is inert and then activate in space?
Yes, you can have the reactor offline, with control rods inserted for launch. Then when you reach the requisite altitude, withdraw the control rods and start up the reactor. In the event of a launch accident and potential destruction of the reactor, the enriched uranium fuel would be a chemical hazard (uranium is a heavy metal like lead), but only a mild radiation hazard (since there are no high-gamma fission product…
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.
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Hot war in outer spaces is should do. War is fine so long 1.(selfishly) it won't kill me, 2. it has no chance of ending the humanity, and 3. the sites devastated can recover. Colonial wars in the asteroid belt and beyond. Interstellar wars. Maybe the first FTL drive could be on an autonomous space torpedo, and that could be lore explanation for the shape of warp nacelles in this timeline.
As wacky as this all sounds it's definitely not the worst possible outcome. Megalomaniacs ruling over tribes, kingdoms and nation states have been throwing their people into bloody wars since the dawn of time. If America and China are dead set on having another dick measuring contest, we're all much better off if they do it with drones halfway between here and the moon, instead of near earthbound population centers.…