Clean Nuclear Launches?

AKAImBatman writes "When it comes to launching millions of pounds of material into space, nearly everyone knows about the Orion Project. Blow up a series of nuclear bombs under your dairy-aire and ride the explosion on up. Unfortunately, the Orion spewed out so much radiation that it just wasn't a feasible launch option. If we want commuter trips to space, we're going to have to find another way. Well, it turns out that NASA's been doing quite a bit of research on Gas Core Nuclear Rockets, an ultra-powerful nuclear rocket that puts out almost no radiation. This research has spurred a fascinating new generation of ideas on reaching the cosmos. Could inexpensive cruises to the moon happen within our lifetimes?"

Why no Orion?

[magarity]

We should still build a secret Orion and keep it handy in case of alien invasion.

Cant we just

[CompWerks]

Run a wire to the International Space Station and use straws glued to the sides of the rocket to guide them.

Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I think you get the idea..

My favorite part...

[Deltan]

..."almost no radiation"...

Call me back when there is none.

Re:Uh

[AKAImBatman]

I've always seen it spelled "dairy-aire". But maybe that's just because I grew up in the Midwest. I'll take note of the spelling in the future. :-)

Re:Uh

[NanoGator]

"Is derriere REALLY that f'ing difficult to spell?"

Is fucking really that fucking difficult to spell?

hrm....

[xao gypsie]

on Gas Core Nuclear Rockets
those have been around for years, and i have been fortunate enough to work with them for much of my life. they are called bean burritos. there is more explosive energy in one of those bad boys than most realize, especially when the chemistry behind the force is just right...granted, the fallout is pretty terrible too...

Hmmm

[odano]

How many years are we talking about? The lease on my land on the moon is running out, and I need to know how soon I should renew.

Warning! Flee your home!

[Chris Burke]

You are being bombared with deadly radiation right now! Coming from the ground, objects in your home, and worst, from mankind's eternal nemesis, the Sun itself. Please flee your home screaming and head for your nearest all-lead fallout shelter!

We'll call you out when it's safe.

Re:Two Words

[*weasel]

now that's fresh fodder for a hollywood disaster film if I've ever heard it.

Safety measure

[j_dot_bomb]

To prevent any sealed radio active capsule from possibly breaking on impact with the ground a malfunctioning rocket will have a 50Meg hydrogen bomb on it to destroy all the pieces in the air

Another dream dashed

[Kgreene]

..."almost no radiation"...

Drat, it seems to be getting harder and harder to realize my life long ambition of being exposed to massive quantities of harmful radition that will be the key to unlocking my secret mutant powers.

Who knew

[GoodNicsTken]

Magnetoplasmadynamic was actually a word? And why didn't Piccard ever use it?

VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse magnetoplasmadynamic Rocket)- And I though telecom had too many acrynoms.

Re:Cant we just

[Greyfox]

Ooh! And we could put paper cups on the end and then they could use it as a backup communication system, too!

Re:It will never happen

[proj_2501]

I thought it was because people going into the hospital, saying "I have an appointment for an NMR" (en em ah) in a New England accent, got something VERY unexpected.

Re:Two Words

[Orion442]

Why, a space escalator of course!

Re:Two Words

[Xzzy]

just tie some twine to the tail of the space shuttle as it goes up, of course.

Then you tie a slightly heavier cable to the twine, and have the guys on the space shuttle start tugging it up.

Once that's up, tie an even heavier cable to the second cable.. and start tugging. Repeat until you have a properly sized cable in place for your elevator.

I was gonna pitch this idea to NASA a few years ago but they never called me back. ;(

Re:I can imagine the protests now...

[Zibblsnrt]

"Last I checked, a geek would be embarassed to display such an ignorance of space technology."

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them..

Not too long ago I actually had someone tell me - with a straight face, mind you - that we shouldn't dare put RTGs or any other kinda fissiony power sources on spacecraft, ever. Why, I ask?

Because they'd pollute the untouched, pristine environment of space with deadly radiation.

He was serious!

And to think, if I took a shovel to the guy's head to try and knock the stupid out, I'd be the one to get in trouble with the law...

Re:Cant we just

[GrubInCan]

Cool, and unlike that stupid geostationary space elevator crap, the ISS moves a lot (a real lot).

Instead of tying the ground end of the wire to something stationary, you could attach a big heavy ball, That way, whenever the ball came rolling by, anybody could send something up to the ISS.

Even paper is heavy

[llZENll]

"ribbon so light and with such a surface area that it would fall to the earth like a peice of paper" even so, wouldn't 36,000 km of paper be quite heavy :)

Re:I can imagine the protests now...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a Reverse-Fusion reactor.

Launch wasn't the problem with Cassini...

[Dr. Zowie]

The big problem (which, IMAO, was a real issue that got glossed over in the propaganda wars about the launch) was hypervelocity impact if the probe accidentally hit Earth during the Earth-flyby gravitational boost.

Cassini, if I recall right, was to go inward to Venus for a gravitational assist, then fly by Earth again for another boost before leaving for the outer solar system. Because the trajectory was only marginally possible to begin with, they had to come rather deep in the gravitational well -- only 200 or 300 miles above the top of the Earth's atmosphere.

During that flyby, Cassini was traveling well above Earth's escape velocity of 10 km/sec. I never saw anyone seriously claim that the plutonium would have remained contained in case of impact.

NASA's response to that point was, essentially, "We don't hit planets by mistake". That was good enough to avoid the various court orders and injunctions that were being cooked up, but it might not suffice today. A few months after the Cassini flyby, NASA (or JPL or Lockheed, depending on whom you ask) did hit a planet by mistake, when the mars probe impacted instead of aerobraking.

On the other hand, the protestors' argument that there was enough plutonium on board to kill half of the Earth's population, if properly distributed, is sheer alarmism. Almost every Slashdot reader generates weekly enough of a certain other substance to, if properly distributed, impregnate half of the Earth's population. Yet only a tiny fraction of children are descended from slashdotters.

Call it something other than 'nucular'?

[eth1]

How about Inverse Fusile Energy Extraction? :p Or Exothermic Matter Decomposition... or Half-Life Accellotron?

Re:Two Words

[MouseR]

Pff. Ignore the mere possibility.

Cores just aren't reliable to contain themselves in the case of a fatal disfunction. They can't be constructed sturdy enough. Now now. not in 400 years from now.

This is proven. Just ask yourself: just how many times did Laforge had to jettison the core?

Wait! I have the perfect idea!

[Guppy06]

Everybody knows that the environmental folks would pitch a fit if we tried to launch a fission-based spacecraft. But they already hate President Bush as it is, so he could include a proposal for a new fission-based shuttle replacement tomorrow and it won't get them any more angry at him than they are now (I mean, is it possible?).

And President Bush could even help handle crowd control at the launch site as well! Let's say we're launching from Cape Canaveral. During that week, Bush flies off to... say... Amundsen-Scott [nsf.gov], muttering phrases like "oil exploration," "WTO" and "nukuler." Maybe suggest he's going to do something that will kill off the ultra-rare Antarctic Dodo. Those myopic protesters that don't die of an instant embolism upon hearing of it will then take off after him, leaving the Cape nearly deserted for lift-off.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Two Words

[AKAImBatman]

Because you can hit a black-box recorder with your shoe for hours, and it won't explode and take the whole state with you.

How do you people come up with this stuff? "Explode and take the whole state with you"? From kicking it with your SHOE? You'll have to forgive me, but I can't believe ANYONE would make that statement!

Ok, Nuclear Physics 101. First and foremost: Fissionable materials are not inherently unstable. In fact, Uranium and Radon are naturally occurring substances that a lot of people live on top of. Now you get a "nuclear pile" when you put a lot of material together. The nuclear material spontaneously fissions on occasion (no, I'm not making this up) producing fast moving and slow moving neutrons. The slow moving neutrons will tend to hit other atoms. If a hit occurs just right, it will cause other material to fission. Heavy materials work best for this as their sheer mass makes them easier to crack.

BTW, there isn't usually enough slow neutrons to produce a nuclear "critical" reaction (i.e. produce any amount of power or heat). Water is usually used to slow down fast neutrons and produce more fissions. With enough fissions, a reactor can get a stable "critical" reaction going. Today's reactors are built to evaporate the water if the reaction gets too hot. Thus a melt-down stops itself. Older reactors kept everything under pressure, so if the reaction got out of hand, you'd end up with a BOILER EXPLOSION. That's right, let me repeat myself, a BOILER EXPLOSION. Those aren't great, but they hardly take out a large area.

As an example, Chernobyl killed 40 people on site. That's it. The remaining 3 reactors at Chernobyl kept running for decades. (Which they shouldn't have, but that's another problem.)

Now, a nuclear bomb is carefully designed to produce what's called a "super-critical" reaction. A super-critical reaction is only obtainable by very careful manipulation of the fissibles. Atomic bombs have shaped charges that force all the neutrons inward and (hopefully) cause most of the material to fission all at once. That produces enough force to take out about a city. For a really BIG explosion, special reflectors and materials are used. First an atomic blast is contained within a tiny bomb. Nearly all the energy is reflected inward by a uranium shell. That much force in a confined space (at a temperature about as hot as the Sun) then forces hydrogen atoms together into a material we call Tritium. The result of this is much more energy than the original blast. Enough to take out a small state or country.

Now, let's take the nuclear challenge. I'll give you a black box of rocket fuel to kick around. I'll take a black box nuclear reactor to kick around. Whoever survives the longest wins. Want to take me up on it?