31–40 of 129 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wondered, how do you deal with all the waste heat from a fission power reactor, in a vacuum? Giant radiators? edit: fixed typo, derp. fusion=fission
It would likely be a thermal reactor, I guess? So no waste heat, since the little heat it gives is used to generate electricity.
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> nuclear power plans by Russia not so much Why? Any lunar base without nuclear power plans is not a serious effort.
The moon is fairly unique (relative to Earth) in that the exact same spot will go from -200C to +100C on a two week cycle (day and night). It seems "obvious" that there must be some clever way to exploit this to generate energy in a simple and novel fashion.
Sure, once you have two-week power-storage infrastructure. (And the scale to harvest a useful amount of energy once a month on average.) In the meantime, i.e. our lifetimes, you have countries that can build space nuclear reactors and countries being performative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wondered, how do you deal with all the waste heat from a fission power reactor, in a vacuum? Giant radiators? edit: fixed typo, derp. fusion=fission
It would likely be a thermal reactor, I guess? So no waste heat, since the little heat it gives is used to generate electricity.
The international moon base plan is fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Lunar_Research_S... (nuclear power plans by Russia not so much) Is there enough gravity on the moon to prevent the long-term health problems from the space station like bone, muscle and vision loss?
> Is there enough gravity on the moon to prevent the long-term health problems from the space station like bone, muscle and vision loss? Nobody knows. You might think scientist can science up answers to any question but it is impossible to know this without long term data which is simply not available. There were some experiments done in parabolic flights [2] but those only last for a very short time. There is this l…
Generating these data is one of the biggest pay-offs of a lunar colony.
One thing they seems to have got working fairly reliably is the lunar landing of the probe using image processing to guide the final approach and touch down. It seems to have worked well in this and the previous mission, there are videos on youtube of that. https://youtu.be/wUju9-cckKA?si=nZFOCga10mnCA_vs The other component is the autonomous docking of the return probe in lunar orbit. Soviets have done a lunar sampl…
Anyone building precision weapons has gotten fairly good at this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nuclear power plans by Russia not so much Why? Any lunar base without nuclear power plans is not a serious effort.
The moon is fairly unique (relative to Earth) in that the exact same spot will go from -200C to +100C on a two week cycle (day and night). It seems "obvious" that there must be some clever way to exploit this to generate energy in a simple and novel fashion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wondered, how do you deal with all the waste heat from a fission power reactor, in a vacuum? Giant radiators? edit: fixed typo, derp. fusion=fission
> Giant radiators? Yup, that's the thing on top [1]. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/tdm/fission-surface-power/
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Solar PV linked to battery storage is the obvious energy source for a moonbase. All reactors require coolant circulation and water is going to be among the most valuable commodities on the moon, not something you want to circulate through a reactor (where you inevitably get tritium formation, making the water unsuitable for other uses). Maybe you could use helium or liquid sodium metal as the primary coolant, but the…
You'll need an insane amount of battery storage, since the moon only rotates once per month and you'll need to power through a long period of no sunlight.
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Perhaps? Any reason that sounds silly to you?
No, and this is not some attack on nuclear power. I am just curious. On earth, nuclear power plants use lots of water and cooling towers. How does that work in a place with no spare water? I also meant to write fission in my original question, not fusion.
Radiators though, are constantly used in spacecraft, and seem to work well. Low gravity, no motion might let the thing be mostly the radiator, with not much support structure. Except it might need to be in shade, in the shadow of a building? hill? solar panels?
What are they expecting to be different about samples from the moon's far side to those previously collected?
But then I do read and watch too much sci-fi!!