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NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

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Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#11

Post by danpalmer »

tiku wrote: post #9
sp0ck wrote: post #2

It's about time. Engineering decisions shouldn't be made based of irrational fears of general population. If nuclear power plant is best option for space mission we should use it.

I don't thinnk it was the fear of the general population, because what influence do we have on dangerous endeavors? If the scientist can do it safely, they could just do it. It must have something to with the state of technology and not being able to do it safe until now.

I disagree. Nuclear reactors have been very safe for a long time now, but between high profile incidents with old reactors, the link with nuclear weapons, and misinformation, the public perception is that they are unsafe.

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#13

Post by krasin »

simias wrote: post #10
sp0ck wrote: post #2

It's about time. Engineering decisions shouldn't be made based of irrational fears of general population. If nuclear power plant is best option for space mission we should use it.

I agree with your sentiment but let's face it, sending humans to Mars is as much PR as it is scientific research (maybe even more). Look how we ended up on the moon in the first place. If NASA wants to get the funding it has to make it as marketable as possible. If there's a big push back from the general population it will be hard to convince the politicians to invest billions in an unpopular project with no short-t…

On a related note, I very much like the fact that "The Martian" movie uses RTG as a life saving device and the best car climate control ever. It helps with the public perception that it's not that dangerous.

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#15

Post by cortexio »

I'm getting kinda sick of the media putting more & more non-sense in our heads instead of actual news. This is pure fantasy. They can't build nuclear reactors on Mars! The only reason why they write this article is because the topic "Mars" generates large amounts of views. News shouldn't be a bussiness :(

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#16

Post by Ntrails »

mikejb wrote: post #6
sp0ck wrote: post #2

It's about time. Engineering decisions shouldn't be made based of irrational fears of general population. If nuclear power plant is best option for space mission we should use it.

I agree. Though we might disagree on where legitimate concerns end and irrational fears start. It is also non-trivial to decide (and argue around) what a 'best option' is without defining a scale of what 'good' and 'bad' would be, and what factors are considered in that scale, and which ones are left out.

Can we start by agreeing on whether or not we care about a nuclear reactor going "pop" on mars pre-colonisation?

Because, you know, there's a chunk of me that thinks we can be less risk averse in trying to do things on an uninhabited planet. Nuclear meltdown is pretty awful on earth, on Mars I don't see it with the same fear.

I also feel like this is not dissimilar from dumping rubbish in the neighbours yard because who cares it's not mine but on a planetary scale. Which seems bad but I want to rationalise it away and say "but this is different".

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#17

Post by 8draco8 »

cortexio wrote: post #15

I'm getting kinda sick of the media putting more & more non-sense in our heads instead of actual news. This is pure fantasy. They can't build nuclear reactors on Mars! The only reason why they write this article is because the topic "Mars" generates large amounts of views. News shouldn't be a bussiness :(

Genuine question: If it's possible to use mini nuclear reactors in satellites then why they just can't land that thing somehow on Mars (like they did with Curiosity) and use it on planet surface to power lab?

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#18

Post by dredmorbius »

8draco8 wrote: post #17
cortexio wrote: post #15

I'm getting kinda sick of the media putting more & more non-sense in our heads instead of actual news. This is pure fantasy. They can't build nuclear reactors on Mars! The only reason why they write this article is because the topic "Mars" generates large amounts of views. News shouldn't be a bussiness :(

Genuine question: If it's possible to use mini nuclear reactors in satellites then why they just can't land that thing somehow on Mars (like they did with Curiosity) and use it on planet surface to power lab?

Output, and fuels.

Thermoisotopic generators generally rely on plutonium, which is in very low supply, and generate only about 100-200We output AFAIU.

That's enough for electronics and comms on a deep-space mission, but doesn't offer a whole lot of surplus power for planetary activity. Among the reasons that lander craft are so slow-moving (they basically manage a slow crawl) is power demands, though other factors, including navigation and stress, are considerations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_...

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#19

Post by dredmorbius »

legulere wrote: post #14

How will they convert heat into electricity? On earth you have plenty of water as a good medium for the heat and a thick atmosphere that serves as the heatsink. On mars you have neither.

Sterling-cycle generator, utilising heat pipes, based on this study (PDF):

http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lare...

Tracked via Wikipedia, which has a brief article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower

Re: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

#20

Post by avar »

dredmorbius wrote: post #18
8draco8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: If it's possible to use mini nuclear reactors in satellites then why they just can't land that thing somehow on Mars (like they did with Curiosity) and use it on planet surface to power lab?

Output, and fuels. Thermoisotopic generators generally rely on plutonium, which is in very low supply, and generate only about 100-200We output AFAIU. That's enough for electronics and comms on a deep-space mission, but doesn't offer a whole lot of surplus power for planetary activity. Among the reasons that lander craft are so slow-moving (they basically manage a slow crawl) is power demands, though other factors, i…

    > plutonium, which is in very low supply.
Thermoisotopic generators are a bad idea for general power generation for a colony for other reasons (they're low power, you need a lot of them), but it's not a problem that they're in low supply.

That's just because we haven't been making more plutonium recently, because we haven't needed it. We could simply make more.

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