Nuclear Reactor For Mars Outpost Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (space.com) 114
A nuclear power system that could one day provide juice to colonies on Mars is closer to being ready than previously expected. According to project team members, the Kilopower experiment fission reactor could be ready for its first in-space trial by 2022. Space.com reports: A flight test is the next big step for the Kilopower experimental fission reactor, which aced a series of critical ground tests from November 2017 through March 2018. No off-Earth demonstration is on the books yet, but Kilopower should be ready to go by 2022 or so if need be, said Patrick McClure, Kilopower project lead at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
"I think we could do this in three years and be ready for flight," McClure said late last month during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group. "I think three years is a very doable time frame," he added, stressing that this is his opinion, not necessarily that of NASA, which is developing the Kilopower project along with the DOE. As its name suggests, the Kilopower reactor is designed to generate at least 1 kilowatt of electrical power (1 kWe). Its output is scalable up to about 10 kWe, and it can operate for about 15 years, McClure said. So, four scaled-up Kilopower reactors could meet the energy needs of NASA explorers, with a fifth reactor likely landed to provide a spare.
"I think we could do this in three years and be ready for flight," McClure said late last month during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group. "I think three years is a very doable time frame," he added, stressing that this is his opinion, not necessarily that of NASA, which is developing the Kilopower project along with the DOE. As its name suggests, the Kilopower reactor is designed to generate at least 1 kilowatt of electrical power (1 kWe). Its output is scalable up to about 10 kWe, and it can operate for about 15 years, McClure said. So, four scaled-up Kilopower reactors could meet the energy needs of NASA explorers, with a fifth reactor likely landed to provide a spare.
Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear Reactor For Mars Outpost Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 => 2040
Re:Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:5, Informative)
No, it is fission, not fusion. Not fundamentally new, just engineering with existing technologies for a different environment.
The cooling system is new for a power station, but not so different to the radiators on the ISS.
Re:Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:5, Funny)
Is it the cooling system that provides the juice?
I heard Mars is quite dry. It'll be nice for people living there to have a nuclear powered juice dispenser.
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Doesn't matter, it is a NASA project.
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Doesn't matter, it is a NASA project.
So cynical for one so young. And you must be very young since you don't know about the Apollo program.
Re: Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:3, Insightful)
Were you young then?
You may have missed the difference in speed of performance between strongly military supported space projects and science supported space projects...
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So you're saying we need to come up with military uses for a compact 1-10kW fission reactor?
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So you're saying we need to come up with military uses for a compact 1-10kW fission reactor?
I'm sure that there are many military uses for a 1 to 10 kWe fission reactor. What separates us from the days of the Apollo program was the public support of our military and the widespread fear of annihilation from another world war. JFK as a Democrat then would be "too Republican" for the Republicans of today. He'd be mocked and driven out of the party as a warmonger, overly militaristic/nationalistic, isolationist, or whatever else you can think of.
Maybe the fear then from a Cold War was overblown but
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The USA was severely divided during the Apollo period, or perhaps you missed the mass protests influencing the retreat from Vietnam. There was an extremely popular counterculture movement that dwarfs anything today.
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The U.S. has *never* been a monoculture. You think the Irish had the same culture as the Mormons? That the culture in the heart of Black New Orleans was basically the same as uptown New York?
No, the only place anything resembling a monoculture existed was in the media, where a heavily sanitized version of one slice of, white, upper-middle-class America designed to maximize the breadth of appeal was the only thing portrayed on the handful of available TV or radio channels with any regularity. Now we have
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You may have missed the difference in speed of performance between strongly military supported space projects...
The majority of which, rest assured, we'll never even learn about.
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Also 1kW isn't much... The ISS averages 80kW. They are going to need something a bit more substantial.
Re: Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:5, Interesting)
The ISS also took like 40 launches to LEO while this guy has a single launch to Mars where solar power is only a third as effective.
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True, but there is a lot more space on Mars for solar panels and batteries. Chances are they will want some kind of nuclear power source as well, but larger than these ones.
For comparison the motor in a Nissan Leaf pulls 80kW peak. It's a relatively small amount of power in the scheme of things.
Delivering power (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but there is a lot more space on Mars for solar panels and batteries.
You have to get them there first since last I checked we a bit thin on manufacturing capacity on Mars. How many missions to Mars to deliver solar panels and batteries are we planning?
Re:Delivering power (Score:4, Interesting)
A more relevant question is how much energy can be supplied for a given weight and size?
TFA says 2000kg for a 1kWe reactor.
Residential solar panels come in at about at about 18kg for a 360W panel, although commercial panels are larger and more efficient for the weight. Anyway, let's go with that. On Mars they will get about 25% of the rated energy compared to earth, so 90W. Say you need 60 of them to generate an average of 1kW over a full day, that's 1080kg of panels.
Now you need some battery storage. 300Wh/kg is available for commercial lithium cells, which is only 80kg for 24kWh.
So solar+battery, even using somewhat pessimistic numbers that are available today, is nearly half the weight of a nuclear reactor.
Re:Delivering power (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says 2000kg for a 1kWe reactor.
1800 kg is a mass of the 10 kWe version. [nasa.gov]
Residential solar panels come in at about at about 18kg for a 360W panel, although commercial panels are larger and more efficient for the weight. Anyway, let's go with that.
Why? A space-grade solar array [northropgrumman.com] will need around 2.5 kg for this level of output.
On Mars they will get about 25% of the rated energy compared to earth
No, they won't. Someone figured out the mean insolation at one of the prospective landing sites. [reddit.com] Apparently it comes out as having roughly the insolation of Germany. So while there is some decrease from Mars' greater distance - at the top of the atmosphere, Mars receives 590 W/m^2 compared to Earth's 1360 W/m^2 - the lack of frequent clouds and the choice of prospective landing sites seem to make up for it a bit.
Now you need some battery storage. 300Wh/kg is available for commercial lithium cells, which is only 80kg for 24kWh.
If you need chemical energy storage for Mars, you'll most likely go with fuel cells. That way your storage capacity is much less limited by the weight of your hardware. You mostly need to bring large tanks. Fortunately, your descent vehicle will already have some, ready for use. That's what for example SpaceX apparently plans to do. Their vehicle's tanks, assuming 50 mt mass of the vehicle's tanks, the tanks basically work as a 1800 MWh battery. That's two orders of magnitude better than your lithium battery.
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Sure, you could use fuel cells. But you're going to have find water to put into the system, or get it from the atmosphere. That will take a lot of time and not importantly energy. Then you're dealing with the massive energy cost of electrolysis, and cooling the hydrogen for storage. So even totally ignoring the setup energy cost, you're throwing away more than half of your input making hydrogen.
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Re: Delivering power (Score:3)
The dust that will be deposited on the panels over time is probably not negligible though.
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I did wonder why the Mars rovers didn't have wipers for the solar panels. Probably some good reason.
Someone will have to go out there with a brush.
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Wipers? You'd just be brushing dust around. Makes more sense to give a way to orient the panel, and put a piezo element on the back of the panel. Tilt and shake.
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That's a job opportunity for the youth of mars. Sort-of like doing lawn work here on earth. You need to think big, not small!
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The kilo-power (KRUSTY [nasa.gov] - according to the main designer the association is intended) is aimed at 10kW, with possibility of scaling up in the future to 100kW. The prototype works at 1kW as far as I know, though it is more in the direction of having more of them than one more powerful. It's a very nice an neat design using Stirling engines to convert heat into mechanical then electrical energy. The concept has been studies for some time, then abandoned and now (fortunately) resurrected.
This technology (a go
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The panels on the ISS are hardly state of the art.
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e.g. state of the art (and huge) ISS solar panels produce 84-120kW [nasa.gov] and their size is impractical for settlements and spaceships.
The solar panels on the ISS are so far behind the state of the art that it's not even funny.
- any settlements would need reliable continues energy, and batteries for 2 weeks night on the Moon or a month on Mars during dust storm would be too big and heavy
You wouldn't use batteries for this. Also, on the Moon, you'd probably place your base in a place with significantly extended sunlight, such as the South Pole crater rims, so two weeks is a pessimistic period.
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So solar+battery, even using somewhat pessimistic numbers that are available today, is nearly half the weight of a nuclear reactor.
Does that include enough battery storage to hold up through month long and planet wide dust storms? I doubt it does.
NASA lost a lot of very expensive probes to planets, moons, and other bodies in the solar system because something blocked the sun to the solar panels. I'm guessing that NASA is a bit tired of spending this money and seeing failure because of a lack of reliable power.
It's not like on Earth or even in orbit when a loss of solar power means something is shutdown until the sun comes out again.
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You would not use battery storage for surviving the occasional dust storm. You'd use the fuel tanks of your vehicle and fuel cells. You need to synthesize fuel anyway, so budgeting a bit more for emergencies is a complete no-brainer.
Are you arguing that they would need more than just batteries for energy storage? Sure, I'll go with that.
Are you arguing that because they have a higher density means of storing energy from solar panels then they can do without nuclear power? That's madness.
There will be no humans landing on Mars until there is a nuclear power plant that lands there first. NASA knows this, and that is why they are conducting these tests.
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Are you arguing that they would need more than just batteries for energy storage? Sure, I'll go with that.
Yes, because they want to get home.
Are you arguing that because they have a higher density means of storing energy from solar panels then they can do without nuclear power? That's madness.
Yes, because whatever gets them the highest power-to-weight ratio will win this, because they want to get home, as pointed out above. And at this point, solar sources are several times better in this respect than nuclear sources.
There will be no humans landing on Mars until there is a nuclear power plant that lands there first.
Yeah, whatever. We'll see about that.
Even more relevant (Score:3)
If humans are depending on the power supply you better be darn sure the power will be there.
A dust storm that lasts longer than the batteries can supply power would be fatal to your entire colony.
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Well for the same weight budget you could take a week or two of backup power.
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*sigh* Every solar proponent seems to make this error. 360 W is the peak generating capacity - how much it'll generate when pointed directly at the sun at noon
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I did use the capacity factor, that's why I said 60 panels.
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And the correct weight is 7200 kg of panels to produce 1 kW.
That's ridiculous. You're off by around two orders of magnitude. First, your average contemporary space-grade solar array (say, an UltraFlex array) is going to have a power density of 150 W/kg these days at 1 AU distance from the Sun. Second, at Mars, this decreases to 65 W/kg due to the distance effect. Third, at the surface, due to Mars' rotation and the optics of the atmosphere, this decreases further to 12 W/kg on average. However, this is still 82 kg, which is very far from your crazy figure of 7200 kg
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True, but there is a lot more space on Mars for solar panels and batteries. Chances are they will want some kind of nuclear power source as well, but larger than these ones.
For comparison the motor in a Nissan Leaf pulls 80kW peak. It's a relatively small amount of power in the scheme of things.
So in other words we should be sending men to Mars, not women... the power generator can't support Hitachi wands!
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Also 1kW isn't much...
It's enough to heat a tent and provide light/radio while you fix the other stuff or wait out a dust storm.
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Even still, this is really fuck-all, so it's quite surprising anyone would even bother with managing a fission reactor for that little energy, even if it can supposedly scale to 10kW. 1kW is within the realm of possibility for RTGs and that's a well proven solution.
Re:Nuclear Reactor Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022 (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, Quaid will start the reactor.
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They'll need a few Russian style test flights before then, I presume.
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It doesn't matter. A power solution for a Mars colony, while *necessary*, isn't on the project's critical path. What *is* on the critical path is building the vehicle that will get people there and land them on the surface, and I don't see any of that stuff being ready by 2030. NASA's long term vision is a manned mission in the 2030s, which means 2040 is virtually impossible too.
The reason has to do with a change in US politics that happened in the 1980s: money was no object for anything defense related,
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You assume we're relying on NASA to get the job done. There's a little company called SpaceX you may have heard of that's working towards delivering the transportation infrastructure on a much more commercially-paced timeline.
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I mentioned SpaceX. As long as SpaceX stays out of defense contracting, sure. But twenty years is a long time.
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Sure, and you're right - as long as NASA insists on relying on incompetent pork-supported contractors who can't get the job done, rather than the companies that are already doing it (the probable scenario in a few years) they won't be the first ones putting people on Mars. Or, they can plan a mission to Mars for 2030, using existing transportation (SpaceX) and habitation (Bigelow) infrastructure that will likely be on the market within the next few years, while claiming that they're going to use defense co
Escape earth (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Escape earth (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, actually part of a suggestion for terraforming mars involved nuking it.
Re: Escape earth (Score:2)
Source: Surviving Mars, game. ;)
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Actually I thought I remembered a prior actual mars colonization project which suggested this or perhaps a book with an ambitious colonization plan but I'm not finding it now. The idea was suggested by Elon Musk as well.
https://www.iflscience.com/space/elon-musk-says-we-could-terraform-mars-dropping-thermonuclear-bombs-it/
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P.S. In the process of looking I stumbled onto the old Project Orion. Definitely fun to remember we had a plan to simply use nuclear explosions to propel us to near light speed and that trick remains in our bag if we ever have serious enough need.
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Yup, actually part of a suggestion for terraforming mars involved nuking it.
Is that what just happened in Russia with the radiation spike... they were just terraforming Russia, making it warmer.
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Nah, Trump is already doing that by rolling back environmental protections. Think of all the gold and oil rich land that will open up when all that pesky frost melts.
Destruction (Score:3)
How will nuclear reactors destroy the earth? Maybe you are confusing nuclear reactors with nuclear bombs? They are two different things.
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How will nuclear reactors destroy the earth? Maybe you are confusing nuclear reactors with nuclear bombs? They are two different things.
I guess that's just like how when people think of petroleum fuels they immediately think of napalm, flame throwers, and fuel-air weapons.
Oh, wait, they don't think of that. They might think of the damage these petroleum fuels might do to the environment when burned but I can't imagine people filling up their cars at a filling station ponder just how many villages in some far off nation could be burned down with the same amount of fuel that is in their tank. But when nuclear power is mentioned the fuel loa
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Uh, which Earth destruction are you talking about? I must have missed that one.
Nuclear technology, power and bombs, have saved tens of millions of lives by eliminating the every-20-years large-scale conventional wars that we would have had otherwise.
Finally a way to get rid of E.Musk (Score:1)
Joke apart, I am afraid nevertheless this kind of reactor will end-up spreading down here on earth. Because apart from Mr Musk, who could probably afford a return ticket, who would like to settle buried liked rats on a desert, solar wind swept, non-breathable hostile planet ? In a very distant future, should you be able to reach Mars in few days (or less), going there to visit and obviously come back, why not. But hone
Re:Finally a way to get rid of E.Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not quite the same (Score:3)
And yet right now there are people happily living in the Artic and Antartic or those who climb Everest despite it not being the most comfortable experience in the world.
"People living happily"? Researchers spend time in Antarctica but they don't live there permanently. Nobody lives on top of Everest. Some people live in the Arctic (in Russia and Norway notably) but there are some huge differences. Compared to Mars, those places are a paradise. We can breath the air, we're protected from radiation, the sun is far brighter, the soil isn't toxic, the temperatures are (mostly) warmer, resupply is (comparatively) trivial, we have easy access to manufacturing and supply cha
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You do realize that both the Artic and Antartic are paradises compared to Mars....right? You know, they have that stuff called oxygen and radiation protection and regular supply flights and um, normal gravity, right? I mean you guys DO know that, right?
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The artic has polar bears and mars has mars bars... I know which I would prefer to encounter in the wild.
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Wild mars bars grow up to 3 meters in height and are carnivorous...
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Exposure to too much sci-fi and uncritical gee-whiz as a young person predisposes people to fantasy outlooks as adults.
I see two core problems (Score:2, Interesting)
First, the obvious one: Launching radioactive material on top of a rocket fueled by highly flammable and explosive material. And we're not talking about some radioisotope battery here where you could say the potential fallout is negligible, this is probably highly enriched fissionable material, and lots of it. Not that it would go up like a nuke, think more like dirty bomb.
And second, weight. Fissionable material tends to be found in the heavier cores of the period system, and it in general also needs simil
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Re:I see two core problems (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine they'll put it in a box made of the same stuff as aircraft black boxes are made of.
Re:I see two core problems (Score:4, Informative)
> And second, weight. Fissionable material tends to be found in the heavier cores of the period system, and it in general also needs similarly heavy stuff for shielding.
I'd review the energy available versus gram of fuel. E=mc^2 yields a great deal of energy per gram of nuclear fuel consumed successfully, typically far more energy than is available from any chemical fuel. It's also available under extreme physical conditions of temperature and pressure. And shielding for outer space, where solar flux and cosmic rays already require shilding for the crew, would not seem such a burdensome problem. It's a familiar, already used technology on a number of spacecraft.
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True. Unfortunately this energy is not used to power the rocket.
Re:I see two core problems (Score:5, Informative)
We have launched many, many fission-based systems into space to power various unmanned probes. This one would not be the first.
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The only notable fission reactor that has flown many missions and for extended periods of time is the Russian BES-5 [wikipedia.org]. BES-5 flew 31 missions up until the late 1980's, but some failed to boost into high orbit and are stuck in LEO or re-entered the atmosphere. Other designs didn't fair so well. SNAP-10A broke down during testing. The two TOPAZ-I units were damaged and leaked radioactive coolant. TOPAZ-II was ground tested but never flew because of red tape.
There are lots of missions using radioisotope thermoel
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You are missing the other problem of "Why the fuck are we going to Mars in the first place?" There are no economic reasons to do so currently, and there's minimal scientific benefit.
When people come up with stupid ideas, I generally ask them, "What problem are you trying to solve?" Often the problem they're trying to solve is only tangentially related to what they're planning to do. When we start discussing the core of the issue they're trying to solve, often the solution is pretty obvious.
So, what problem
The Kilopower experiment fission reactor (Score:2)
Just don't let Putin put it on a rocket (Score:3)
holos (Score:2)
1) It is 3-13 MWe,
2) fits in standard shipping container.
3) built for mobility.
4) melt-down proofed.
5) fuel cycle is 3-20 years, depending on enrichment.
The interesting part would be cooling it. It is meant to be air-cooled. I would think that it would have to be buried in a container with air, and then allow the heat to either be pulled off for heating equipment/buildings, OR simply dumped into the ground.
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Um, you DO know that Mars is blasted with deadly radiation already?
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Sadly, all the far lefties are here screaming about Nuclear melt-down, etc while not realizing that the amount of radiation that we send up on these reactors is next to nothing compared to just being in space, outside of Earth's magnetosphere.
Earth is probably the only life-friendly location in this solar system, save being under ice on various moons, mars, and maybe in the upper atmosphere of venus.
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You worry about Nuclear power on Mars, and that it could melt-down, yet, Mars (let alone the moon) is DOUSED in radiation that is many times more from the sun, than what a small reactor carries. In fact, Musk has suggested the idea of blowing Nukes over the poles to melt the CO2 to get it into the atmosphere. Some, like you, scream about the radiation from the nukes, when it would not even
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I don't know about the the poster, but *I* have serious questions about his parents...
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A "trial run" on the Moon? Going to the moon isn't exactly like taking a trip to Walmart.
Re: Moon test (Score:2)
Yeah, no one ever died going to the Moon.
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But the Moon is full of resources. Just pack a helium-3 powered 3D printer and pretty soon you've bootstrapped a new civilization.
It really is that simple, because computers got better at handling information, you see.
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Any reason we haven't done a trial run on the moon?
We did that 50 years ago.
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An actual unit, using SI, might be KJ (kilojoules). Or even MJ (megajoules). So, why don't the SI fanatics actually use SI correctly?
And no, you don't weigh (some number of) Kg. You weigh (some number of) Newtons....
Deep breath. Okay, got that out of my system for another year....
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It's to differentiate it from thermal energy, the units in which nuclear reactors are usually measured. From this page: [definedelectric.com]
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Plenty of people would go. Maybe you require people yapping at you every day, but other people don't. Maybe you have to go outside and see the sky every day, but others don't.
No one would be "utterly alone" anyway, the delay each way for communication with Earth would be 3 to 22 minutes depending on relative positions.
Also you're assuming no other colonists would ever come.
Plenty of people are made of tougher stuff than you are.
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The problem with prison is NOT that you lack freedom. It is that you lack the freedom to CHOOSE where to go, what to do, how to learn, etc.
Heck, a better comparison is being on a nuclear submarine. In fact, I believe the the first ppl on the moon/mars should NOT be pilots, ppl like you, but instead, ex-submariners who have shown that they can handle this.
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And as to 'nuclear waste', on mars or the moon, give me a break. The sun has a LOT MORE RADIATION than what the waste will have.
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