From: Technotranscendence (neptune@superlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 07 2003 - 07:02:23 MDT
On Saturday, September 06, 2003 10:53 AM Robert J. Bradbury
bradbury@aeiveos.com
> And then to make it really interesting -- you
> might take a stab at using nuclear power.
> See typical submarine nuclear power sizes
> & outputs [1] -- then select some conversion
> efficiency to ion propulsion -- though there
> are perhaps other propulsion alternatives.
There are, such as nuclear pulse propulsion, but a lot of work needs to
be done on that. I believe it would beat out any competitor, though.
(See George Dyson's _Project Orion_ for a decent history of nuclear
pulse propulsion. He also has an excellent bibliography of papers on
the subject.)
The big problem, however, for anything nuclear is political. A lot of
people are against nuclear anything and it would be a hard sell to get
them to not actively organize against nuclear rocketry.
> One might get around the safety concerns
> by using a PBMR [2], though I'm not sure
> how this would impact the weight of the
> reactor.
Ah, but the political concerns would remain...
Kind of off topic, but the current issue of _American Scientist_ 91(5)
[2003 Sept-Oct] has
"Thorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy." This is more to alleviate concerns
about making bombs from spent fuel rods...
For more on this, see: http://www.amsci.org/amsci/amsci.html
and:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/25710;jses
sionid=aaad9MFq7yTkBZ?fulltext=true
Regards from,
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html
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