China's New Space Reactor 'Will Be 100 Times More Powerful Than a Similar Device NASA Plans To Put on the Surface of the Moon by 2030' (scmp.com) 134
Hmmmmmm writes: China is developing a powerful nuclear reactor for its moon and Mars missions, according to researchers involved in the project. The reactor can generate one megawatt of electric power, 100 times more powerful than a similar device Nasa plans to put on the surface of the moon by 2030. The project was launched with funding from the central government in 2019. Although technical details and the launch date were not revealed, the engineering design of a prototype machine was completed recently and some critical components have been built, two scientists who took part in the project confirmed to the South China Morning Post this week.
To China, this is an ambitious project with unprecedented challenges. The only publicly known nuclear device it has sent into space is a tiny radioactive battery on Yutu 2, the first rover to land on the far side of the moon in 2019. That device could only generate a few watts of heat to help the rover during long lunar nights. Chemical fuel and solar panels will no longer be enough to meet the demands of human space exploration, which is expected to expand significantly with human settlements on the moon or Mars on the agenda, according to the Chinese researchers. "Nuclear power is the most hopeful solution. Other nations have launched some ambitious plans. China cannot afford the cost of losing this race," said one researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
To China, this is an ambitious project with unprecedented challenges. The only publicly known nuclear device it has sent into space is a tiny radioactive battery on Yutu 2, the first rover to land on the far side of the moon in 2019. That device could only generate a few watts of heat to help the rover during long lunar nights. Chemical fuel and solar panels will no longer be enough to meet the demands of human space exploration, which is expected to expand significantly with human settlements on the moon or Mars on the agenda, according to the Chinese researchers. "Nuclear power is the most hopeful solution. Other nations have launched some ambitious plans. China cannot afford the cost of losing this race," said one researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Jinping Commands (Score:5, Funny)
Jinping: I want the biggest baddest nuclear reactor for our moon and Mars exploration.
Flunkie: Why?
Jinping: We have to beat the Americans. I demand it.
Flunkie leaves and talks to Flackie:
Flunkie: Boss-Man wants a new big dick.
Flackie: Ah, I guess his has shrunk again, eh? He'll never take Taiwan with one that small.
Re:Jinping Commands (Score:5, Funny)
The Soviet Unions greatest accomplishment was the Apollo program.
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Of course the current crop of "EBIL BIG GUBBERMINT CAN DO NOTHING RIGHT!" politicians will probably f*ck that up royally.
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China used to do things unannounced, then only talk about it when it succeeds. They opened up a bit more lately with the civilian space program, but still lacks the hype you see from the likes of SpaceX.
Re:Jinping Commands (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a question of budget. NASA is basically pork as far as the people in control of the purse strings are concerned.
In China space is a prestige issue and a way to push development of technology as their economy transitions. They are aware of the benefits that the Space Rate bought to the USA, despite the cost.
So naturally the goals are a bit different in scale.
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It's clear, the US is still investing space tech, much more than other countries. China is just developing in a normal scale and pace. The US is going to lead in space tech for decades.
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Maybe GP was talking about the attitude towards it. I can't speak to what that's like in China, but here in the USA it seems that a small percentage of people are still bullish on space, but most are ho-hum at best and many actively think we should spend nothing on it because we have things here on Earth that they want to spend money on. Like fucking walls, as if those were going to help with anything.
OTOH how much you spend is important but not the whole story, here in the USA we can waste money like nobod
Lawyer-speak and background noise. (Score:4, Insightful)
Prototype design for a powerful nuclear reactor for the space programme has been completed and some components have been built, according to researchers
The "some components" part would be true of literally anything you can possibly build, ever. Even attaching the word "critical" means nothing in this context. You wouldn't put something on space hardware at all if it weren't critical. And the bar for "prototype design" (not prototype construction...just design) is so low, there's not much that couldn't claim it from 1960s and 1970s archival research.
Also, real projects of such a magnitude with national backing have dates attached to them. You'd get a target timeline from a real source long before you'd get enough technical details to make the story credible, even if the target was politically-motivated and silly.
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nit-picking nukes (Score:2, Informative)
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Given that the context here is nuclear device sent to space by China, they do not unless those were in Chinese spacecraft.
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An RTG is not considered a "nuclear reactor". So, no they do not count.
An RTG is a blob of warm/hot material, and a Peltier element creating a low current from that heat. Extremely inefficient.
A reactor is considered to be much much more complex. As in steam, liquids, cooling, probably turbines.
But I'm pretty sure you could come up with new designs, e.g. sintered ceramic sterling engines.
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no, TFS said Yutu 2 is the only Chinese spacecraft with a radioisotope heater. The US and Russia have launched a bunch of RTG-powered spacecraft and a few with nuclear reactors.
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There is no spacecraft that actually contains a real nuclear reactor.
Only RTGs.
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"An RTG is a blob of warm/hot material, and a Peltier element creating a low current from that heat. Extremely inefficient."
Also, extremely cheap compared to the full blown device.
And relatively light compared to other ways to produce electricity (it won't beat solar in Earth orbit).
Not to mention that it basically can't fail (it loses electricity production in time due to both the radioactive isotope getting less radioactive and the thermoelectric getting "aged", but it is some 80% in 10 years.
Electricity
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I guess they mean on the moon, not in space. Lunokhod 1 had a radioisotope heater but it didn't generate electricity.
Space: 1999 (Score:2)
The SCMP huh? (Score:2)
Totally not CCP propaganda.
Good for China (Score:3)
Maybe the United States can try stealing their designs. Win win for everyone!
Even a megawatt seems laughable (Score:2)
Just how big a population and manufacturing center do we think we can support with 10 kW? It seems like we're planning to go on a camping trip. If we have any installation that has to endure the lunar night, this will be the only power supply for much of the time. A megawatt seems like a good prototype. It is not even enough to supply a single TBM for tunneling out the base.
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If we have any installation that has to endure the lunar night, this will be the only power supply for much of the time. A megawatt seems like a good prototype. It is not even enough to supply a single TBM for tunneling out the base.
Well you use the heat as well, instead of using electricity to produce heat. That means the electrical output of the reactor maybe 1MW but the thermal output could be closer to 3-4MW considering mechanical losses.
That would also mean you could run the reactor harder during lunar night (when you would need more heat anyway) to charge a whole bunch of batteries that you would use during the day when you use less heat. Also you could use the lunar regolith itself to conduct heat and increase the efficiency
Re: Even a megawatt seems laughable (Score:2)
I doubt the first Martian base will be underground. It's a modular prototype maybe? if it works they can build more or scale up. Either way the first people living on the moon will be above ground till infrastructure is built. Stays will be comparable to the ISS.
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A megawatt can definitely power a small TBM that operating on the moon. Reference: https://www.tunneltalk.com/Tun... [tunneltalk.com].
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Re: Even a megawatt seems laughable (Score:2)
Obviously 1MW can't support a massive lunar base, but then we can't currently build a massive lunar base either. You gotta start somewhere.
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I don't know where they got the 10 kW number from. According to this Slashdot story [slashdot.org] from just a few days ago, NASA is proposing to build a reactor that generates "no less than 40 kilowatts".
Anyway, I don't think any of these is meant to support a big population. You start small and scale up. This is just the first version.
Another thing to remember about the moon is that you get abundant solar energy for two weeks, followed by no solar energy at all for the next two weeks. Any big lunar facility would pr
How do you say ... (Score:2)
Space 1999 or For All Mankind scenario (Score:2)
Good (Score:2)
Yea right (Score:2)
"[scientist] ... who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media"
Everything is rather tightly controlled in China, it's almost inconceivable that this is a truly unauthorized leak. The censors can stop it, at latest, before SCMP publishes, on the off chance it was somehow not detected or handled before or right after giving the interview.
So it's best to read every piece of news like this with a large grain of suspicion that it's directly generated CCP propaganda
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I would say any positive news coming out of China has CCP's stamp of approval on it. However, that does not necessarily mean it's false. They've said many things that did turn out to be true too.
I trust NASA (Score:3)
I trust NASA to manage the design, launch, and delivery of a small lunar-bound nuclear reactor with reasonable care (yes, despite the shuttle program) and nearly negligible risk to human life.
I do not trust China to do the same, especially with a much larger device.
Two of 132 (Score:2)
From 1981-2011 the shuttle flew 132 crewed missions. The crew was lost in two.
Considering spaceflight involves sitting on top of 3 million pounds of rocket fuel while it's *on fire*, that's a pretty decent success rate.
One by can certainly find things to criticize with the shuttle program. The safety record isn't crap, though.
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I trust NASA to manage the design
I trust NASA with exactly nothing. They can't manage themselves let alone projects.
How much of ALL of NASA's (and I'm going to use this word generously) "efforts" have been uttterly wasted? My direct interest with NASA started with the shuttle. Like most everyone else, I had a love affair with them in the 80s over the shuttle and Voyager and all the rest. I resisted disillusionment with the revelations after Challenger. But then came the Mars Climate Orbiter, the Hubble mirror scandal, Columbia, Curiosity,
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You could always cooperate with them, share experience and make sure it's done safely.
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NASAs launch vehicle is made by Boeing. Still feel so confident?
What a hoot! (Score:2)
Anyone in the west, media included who thinks the CCP allows unnamed sources to leak info like the western lame stream media use for sources is an idiot.
Deja Vu (Score:2)
As one of the elderly folks here I cannot help noticing how the CCP rhetoric and actions parallel those of the CCCP. It seems they may have removed the wrong C leaving the one for "Communist" in place. It's the nature of Communist regimes. it's so strong it breaks through all cultural barriers and you get the same old same old repeated every time. Children, it's not gonna work this time, either. But, really, Xi "Poohbear" Jinping and his CCP are just so comically like the Russian Commissars it's funny despi
Separate fantasy from reality (Score:2)
People seriously need to learn to separate fantasy from reality. A steady diet of dystopian sci-fi and Noam Chomsky has instilled so much fear that the only possible outcome of proposing real technological progress will be doom and disaster. It's a wonder that such people are able to get out of bed in the morning.
Get used to it. (Score:2)
We need to start getting used to being outdone by the Chinese. While we are focused on woke math where 2+2 equals 5, their kids are studying real math and will out engineer us in every possible way.
Keep it in space. (Score:2)
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Best place for nuclear waste.
Re:Oh great (Score:5, Funny)
Has nobody seen Space 1999?
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Maybe. It's modded insightful.
Re: Oh great (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah...it's a real danger to its sensitive biosphere.
Re:Oh great (Score:4, Interesting)
Now we're going to fuck up the Moon with nuclear waste?
Will it even matter? https://science.thewire.in/the... [thewire.in]
Re:Oh great (Score:4, Insightful)
I am pretty sure there is so much radiation already on the moon that the rocks won't care.
Re:Oh great (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no wind to spread dangerous material, and to can't be outside without a spacesuit anyway.
But there is also little gravity so any explosion could spread material quite far, and anything that gets on your suit is going to end up inside the airlock too.
I wonder how they plan to cool it.
Re:Oh great (Score:5, Informative)
Someone with more knowledge in this area please speak up, but aren't "nuclear reactor explosions" really steam explosions? If this reactor isn't using water, then there'd be no steam, hence no explosion possibility.
Of course, nuclear power plants are really just big steam kettles that use expanding steam to spin a turbine. Maybe the lithium mentioned as the fluid? Or maybe something thermometric, like the old Soviet ones? Horribly inefficient, but it might work on the moon.
Only some of the heat generated by the reactor would be used to produce electricity, the rest must dissipate quickly in space to avoid a meltdown. To solve this issue, the reactor would use a foldable structure like an umbrella to increase the total surface area of waste heat radiators, according to Jiang and her colleagues.
Because of its compact size, the space reactor would operate at a temperature much higher than those on Earth (likely 2,000 degrees Celsius at the core). It would use liquid lithium as coolant for greater power generation efficiency.
Re:Oh great (Score:4, Informative)
If this reactor isn't using water, then there'd be no steam, hence no explosion possibility.
Of course, nuclear power plants are really just big steam kettles that use expanding steam to spin a turbine. Maybe the lithium mentioned as the fluid?
Thanks for posting the fragment of the article - I can;t read the full article.
Well two things IIRC. The first is that it's not like a terrestrial reactor, it has to be more compact. The existing ones NASA uses are fueled with pu-298 (as opposed to pu-239) in a Stirling engine. The slug of pu-298 is the heat source of a working gas that moves the piston within the stirling engine that turns a generator. Maybe argon is the working gas or nitrogen perhaps.
That would make the lithium the coolant on the cold side of the stirling engine and the surface area of the radiators would be proportional to the total output of the reactor in joules. NASA uses the heat of this type of reactor as well to keep the electronics of spacecraft (Voyager and Curiosity for example IIRC) in an operational range as well as the electricity derived from the mechanical energy created by the stirling engine. The decay of the pu-298 then determines the life expectancy of the space craft.
So for larger manned craft it would increase the efficiency of the reactor (as NASA do) if you could put the heat to some use, which they probably will. The main issue with running a stirling engine that hot is that the lubricants become explosive so the choice of working gas would be a critical part of being able to reach their goal.
Nuclear power in space is the logical place for nuclear power, it's so radioactive anyway nothing we do up there is going to make any difference. Making big nuclear powered rockets for use in space would be a great way for us to deal with the nuclear waste we have on earth too.
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The existing ones NASA uses are fueled with pu-298 (as opposed to pu-239) in a Stirling engine.
That would be plutonium 238, not 298.
Nuclear power in space is the logical place for nuclear power, it's so radioactive anyway nothing we do up there is going to make any difference. Making big nuclear powered rockets for use in space would be a great way for us to deal with the nuclear waste we have on earth too.
There is no nuclear waste problem, only a perception problem. The "waste" that you are talking about is an energy resource of which only ~5% has been consumed. The only reasonable course of action, is to fuel molten salt reactors with it, allowing the rest to be converted into energy and short lived fission products. MSRs in particular, because they can accept the entire gamut of actinides, and don't need the insanely complex separation of plutonium which solid fuels do.
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The existing ones NASA uses are fueled with pu-298 (as opposed to pu-239) in a Stirling engine.
That would be plutonium 238, not 298.
I did not recall correctly - thanks for correcting my neutrons.
There is no nuclear waste problem, only a perception problem. The "waste" that you are talking about is an energy resource of which only ~5% has been consumed. The only reasonable course of action, is to fuel molten salt reactors with it, allowing the rest to be converted into energy and short lived fission products. MSRs in particular, because they can accept the entire gamut of actinides, and don't need the insanely complex separation of plutonium which solid fuels do.
Depleted Uranium is also a nuclear waste problem and there is about 10 times more of that than pu-239. Nuclear had it's chance to do that with IFR technology, and nuclear supporters didn't support it. Consequently the oil and coal lobby went after it where they could do the most damage, the framing of energy policy. I don't think MSR can deal with DU the way that IFR burner reactors could. Can you provide any information on how MSR handles DU?
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Depleted uranium is even less dangerous than natural uranium. Which isn't of much danger at all, unless you're talking about its pyrophoricity.
Specifically it's pyrophoricity when used as a weapon makes a ceramic dust which becomes an inhalant. If it is usable as a fuel (such as IFR was able to) it becomes undesirable to use it as a weapon.
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No, it's not. "Depleted uranium" is, pretty much, U-238. Which has a half-life of 4.5 or so billion years. In other words, it's not not an issue (half-life in the timezone of the age of the Earth translates to "might as well be non-radioactive".
Which is why depleted uranium (U238) is used to make shells for tank guns.
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Which is the specific application it should *NOT* be used in because it's pyrophoricity when used as a weapon makes a ceramic dust [slashdot.org] that is impossible to remove from the environment.
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The existing ones NASA uses are fueled with pu-298 (as opposed to pu-239) in a Stirling engine.
No. Existing NASA nuclear power systems (RTG) use thermocouples to extract power from the temperature difference between the Pu and the outside world. The Pu-238 provides heat by decaying.
The lifetime of the RTG is limited by decay in the Pu and by degradation of the thermocouples.
The Kilopower system referred to in TFA is a fission reactor. The only hardware built so far is a 1 kW demonstrator (KRUSTY) which uses a Stirling generator to provide electricity. I assume this will be used in the full-scale 10 k
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The existing ones NASA uses are fueled with pu-298 (as opposed to pu-239) in a Stirling engine.
No. Existing NASA nuclear power systems (RTG) use thermocouples to extract power from the temperature difference between the Pu and the outside world. The Pu-238 provides heat by decaying. The lifetime of the RTG is limited by decay in the Pu and by degradation of the thermocouples.
The Kilopower system referred to in TFA is a fission reactor. The only hardware built so far is a 1 kW demonstrator (KRUSTY) which uses a Stirling generator to provide electricity. I assume this will be used in the full-scale 10 kWe system too.
I stand corrected [nasa.gov].
The Kilopower system referred to in TFA is a fission reactor. The only hardware built so far is a 1 kW demonstrator (KRUSTY) which uses a Stirling generator to provide electricity. I assume this will be used in the full-scale 10 kWe system too.
Indeed, thanks for the reference.
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NASA has been working on an RTG with a Stirling generator, but the ASRG [wikipedia.org] project was cancelled in 2013, with only a trickle of funding continuing for long-term tests of Stirling units.
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Making big nuclear powered rockets for use in space would be a great way for us to deal with the nuclear waste we have on earth too.
You'd want your delivery system for sending nuclear waste into space to be very reliable though.
Absolutely.
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You'd want your delivery system for sending nuclear waste into space to be very reliable though.
Keeping nuclear fuel in a few big, easy-to-find chunks isn't as difficult as you might think.
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Someone with more knowledge in this area please speak up, but aren't "nuclear reactor explosions" really steam explosions?
Usually yes, because most nuclear reactors are water-cooled. Terrestrial reactors tend to use water for heat transfer and/or moderation, when things go wrong you get a steam explosion: the reactor starts producing more heat than expected, water flashes to steam and breaches the containment vessel.
This reactor uses liquid lithium for heat transfer. So no water, but you still have a liquid in the reactor that could boil if things go wrong.
A reactor that doesn't use liquid won't have the 'steam explosion' fail
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Someone with more knowledge in this area please speak up, but aren't "nuclear reactor explosions" really steam explosions?
Usually yes, because most nuclear reactors are water-cooled. Terrestrial reactors tend to use water for heat transfer and/or moderation, when things go wrong you get a steam explosion: the reactor starts producing more heat than expected, water flashes to steam and breaches the containment vessel.
This reactor uses liquid lithium for heat transfer. So no water, but you still have a liquid in the reactor that could boil if things go wrong.
A reactor that doesn't use liquid won't have the 'steam explosion' failure mode - instead it'll go straight to meltdown (as happened at Windscale, which was air-cooled).
Well, in the interests of accuracy, the danger at Windscale wasn't so much a meltdown as it was a fire. True, some fuel slugs were melting, but the fire -- mainly burning graphite -- threatened to release radioactive particles to atmosphere. It was only the foresight of one scientist that saved everything [bbc.com].
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aren't "nuclear reactor explosions" really steam explosions?
There's no single type of catastrophic failure that all nuclear reactors would have, since there's so many different types of them. And since space-based nuclear reactors use highly enriched uranium for weight reduction reasons...well, you figure out where that leads.
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Presumably with radiant panels, although I imagine they will try to harness as much of the “waste” heat as possible. I assume it would be 1MWT; you would really need a good thermal buffer for the unexpected, and I would have to imagine you would need over 250m2 of radiant panels. The cooling system would be the most interesting part of the project for sure!
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Presumably with radiant panels
It's not like there's any other option. But the cooling for a ~5 MWt reactor will be large...or it will be a very high temperature reactor. [projectrho.com]
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Don’t you have the ‘benefit’ of (near) absolute zero from the radiant panel?
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It's not like that uranium was in the ground to begin with.
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Now we're going to fuck up the Moon with nuclear waste?
A few years ago I was on a anti-nuclear board reading some of the responses. There was a thread there about a proposed plan to use rockets to shoot nuclear waste into the sun. Some of them where actually worried about how bad the nuclear waste would mess up the sun.
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...a future where our descendants can't even remember the petty axles around which we've wrapped ourselves.
Oh. Yeah. Because humanity will leave its fundamental character behind if it heads out for the stars. There's no chance it will just carry on its petty bullshit and bickering in space when it heads out that way. No chance....
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Re: Oh great (Score:2)
We will find plenty of life far less sophisticated but we either won't recognize it or disagree over it until finally a higher intelligence shows up.
Your assumptions are safe in some regards while seeming lacking in others.
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Hopefully, we'll up our game before we truly see the stars. The chances that whoever we meet first will not be at a higher apex than ourselves are slim to none.
The chances are that humanity will gleefully extinct itself first. Our Lizard brain does a great job of asserting dominance, and finds uses for what our higher brain designs.
tl;dr - killing humans is a core competency of humans
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"tl;dr - killing humans is a core competency of humans"
We have no choice. Humans are top level predators, nothing else keeps our numbers down. When population growth exceeds the capacity of the environment to feed them, war to reduce the population is just what happens.
This goes way beyond war - Humans simply enjoy killing other humans - be it war, or just for fun. We are ultraviolent, because we want to be.
The very fact that many do not to admit this truth is part of why we continue. If we do not evolve, we are pretty likely doomed.
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This goes way beyond war - Humans simply enjoy killing other humans - be it war, or just for fun. We are ultraviolent, because we want to be.
Maybe for some. Plenty of people don't. I don't even enjoy killing people in video games.
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This goes way beyond war - Humans simply enjoy killing other humans - be it war, or just for fun. We are ultraviolent, because we want to be.
Maybe for some. Plenty of people don't. I don't even enjoy killing people in video games.
Right - but here is the problem. Killing people is an action. Not killing people is not an action. Kind of like now not collecting stamps is not a hobby. Our actions define us.
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The problems are that war seldom really puts a dent in population growth, even the 2 world wars barely slowed the growth.
Modern warfare has a habit of killing the most fit, consider the world wars where the best and brightest went to war to get randomly killed, and modern warfare has a lot of randomness to it. The UK for example got hit hard with 2 generations of young men getting devastated.
The other horsemen seem to work better, at least till lately with modern medicine etc, disease and famine. Covid for
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You're saying when we make it to the Stars, there will continue to be Wars?
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It will be our petty bullshit, but it will be the same petty bullshit in a different setting. Instead of fighting over depleting aquifers we'll fight over rocks with lots of water ice in them. Then if we make it to other planets, we can fight over those, too. Maybe we won't have nations by then and we'll have to form even more synthetic teams before we can have those fights.
Any time there's not enough resources to go around, there's no reason for life to just give up without a fight. Those who gave up in th
Re: Oh great (Score:2)
Expense.
Talk is cheap
Re: Space race (Score:2)
The US already largely blocked China from participating in joint space programs. This is because the Chinese Space Agency is indistinguishable from the military. So the space race has been taken to a new level for at least a few centuries.
Interesting history lesson, the fire department in China also was part of the military and the divorce of the two only happened somewhere around 10 to 15 years ago. So, this may give you some idea how long it would take till US "demands" would be met.
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Re: Space race (Score:2)
Agreed
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That's not unusual.
Firefighters were military in the Romanian Principates in the 1840s.
Guess what - as a member of the European Union, Romania's main firefighting service is still military.
Re: Space race (Score:2)
That's blind of my point. Distinguishing these services from military is a complex matter.
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The US already largely blocked China from participating in joint space programs. This is because the Chinese Space Agency is indistinguishable from the military.
This is how it works always. Space tech is military tech. The same tech you use to put a rocket in orbit lets you put a big hole or a radioactive crater anywhere on the planet in less than 24 hours. The same tech that lets you beam propaganda into the homes of your citizens lets you beam positioning data to your cruise missiles.
It's quite interesting that space launch companies are currently building the most puissant weapons of war known today, namely heavy launch vehicles. That centrifuge thing counts too
Re: Space race (Score:2)
Exactly. Completely agree
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Every national space program has started out as "indistinguishable from the military." von Braun had to tell Nazis his rockets could deliver bombs so they'd let him build them. Mercury launched on ICBMs. The space shuttle was such an apparent boondoggle because the US air force insisted it be capable of swiping Russian satellites from orbit.
Re: Space race (Score:2)
Completely agree... This is my point. Space advances by nature piggy back on this development for space warfare but we through history attempt to disguise it. The fact that China is this way is inconsequential but our banning of participation will have deep consequences...