The Astronomy Thread

LOL the ion engines on NASA's Dawn probes are actually in KSP already. There's a couple mods with the VASIMR drive and some megawatt-range reactors but I dunno how realistic they are.

Also, you need that nuclear reactor to run for months/years without maintenence or anyone operating it. Dunno how feasible that is.

Another obstacle is politics of putting nuclear reactors into orbit.

The RTG on the Curiosity rover produces 110w and has enough isotope for 14 years or something. It's some fancy multi-mission RTG JPL designed so that it'll do at least 7 years at 100W, so it can do the full suite of tests that the Curiosity is equipped for at least 10 years. Some of the low-energy stuff are good for 14 years, but now it's looking like the wheels on it won't even last that long.

Anyways they can produce solid-state seebeck RTGs that are scaled up from that to the 5KW range... but full turbine reactors would become waaay more efficient after it gets to size of a car. As for the political stigma of putting nuclear generators in space they can mitigate the risk by assembling the generators in cislunar lagrange orbits, far out of any real risk, and have the fuel rods brought up in several launches.

But yeah the maintenance of the nuclear reactor would need a crew full time. The VASIMR was more or less designed to be a solid-state engine that wouldn't need new metallurgy and minimum maintenance by using magnetic containment for all the reaction volumes. Having a crew around to babysit its power source would be defeating that purpose:

khorum said:

The RTG on the Curiosity rover produces 110w and has enough isotope for 14 years or something. It's some fancy multi-mission RTG JPL designed so that it'll do at least 7 years at 100W, so it can do the full suite of tests that the Curiosity is equipped for at least 10 years. Some of the low-energy stuff are good for 14 years, but now it's looking like the wheels on it won't even last that long.

Anyways they can produce solid-state seebeck RTGs that are scaled up from that to the 5KW range... but full turbine reactors would become waaay more efficient after it gets to size of a car. As for the political stigma of putting nuclear generators in space they can mitigate the risk by assembling the generators in cislunar lagrange orbits, far out of any real risk, and have the fuel rods brought up in several launches.

But yeah the maintenance of the nuclear reactor would need a crew full time. The VASIMR was more or less designed to be a solid-state engine that wouldn't need new metallurgy and minimum maintenance by using magnetic containment for all the reaction volumes. Having a crew around to babysit its power source would be defeating that purpose:

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I think I remember that they've more or less ran out of the isotope needed to make these RTGs as it was a byproduct of the nuclear alchemy used to create fissionable materials for weapons, which isn't something that is being done large scale right now (or for a while). I could be wrong.

They cannot at this time assemble a nuclear reactor in cis lunar space. I'd like to see us with that capability, but that's an unknown timeframe. The risk isn't the assembly anyway, it's in the (perceived) chance of an accident during the launch of something with radioactive materials in it.

Big Phoenix said:

There have already been nuclear reactors(albeit very small low power ones, basically high power RTGs) put into space;

SNAP-10A - Wikipedia

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I wasn't arguing this - it was not my contention that someone had not put an atomic reactor in space (I didn't know one way or the other before you posted the link above), what I was saying was basically that building an atomic reactor on Earth and then launching it into low orbit is a lot different than launching parts to lunar orbit or w/ever and then assembling it there. We don't have anything like the facilities or logistics for that right now. We could of course send one there (at some point) but what had been said was that to avoid politics stopping the use of atomic reactors on a spacecraft you could send the parts for an atomic reactor to lunar space (more or less) using multiple launches and assemble it there, which I am doubtful that we actually could right now (believing that we'd have to build some kind of facility there). Perhaps the Falcon Heavy could be used forr this, but otherwise I don't think we have a cheap enough rockent to do this (and I don't have faith in the SLS or New Glenn until they actually finish one). The SLS will be too expensive to do the multiple launch thing to do this anyway. Only way they fund a major push into space using that is if we discover a derelict alien artifact somewhere in the solar system or some such.

RTGs use radioactive decay and require very radioactive substances, atomic reactors require atomic fission and are different. A difference between the two is that you can turn off an atomic reactor, but an RTG remains on forever (unless you remove the radioactive heat source).

Would be nice to develop space technologies to the point we could do asterout mining and actually build stuff in space (perhaps mining Psyche for metal).

Edmonton looked like the apocalypse was near for a bit, even though Edmonton always looks like the end of days it seems. (not my pic)

Araxen said:

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teehee the impact crater looks like a butthole!



Sorry I'll let the grown ups continue to post now.