deleted by creator
A small reactor like what we use in submarines or our aircraft carriers would probably be the best tool for the job on the moon. They are small and require minimal maintenance (within their fairly long lifespan) and they produce enormous amounts of power.
How much weight in solar panels would it take to produce what a reactor could?
Would a single panel on the moon last more than 20 years?
How do we decommission panels on the moon?
(forgot about batteries)… all of these things IDEALLY will come back down to Earth some day so the fewer things we put on the moon in the first place the better
And we can just shoot the spent fuel into the sun!
It’s more efficient to launch it out of the solar system. Less Δv required.
Imagine being the first alien civilization to find remnants of ancient human culture in space, and it’s a cancerous death rock screaming radiation… Haha
Having enough batteries to survive two weeks of darkness would weigh a lot more than a nuclear reactor.
Solar might only be viable at some polar regions where you can get full sunlight with no day/night cycle. 2 weeks of night time to survive on batteries would be rough.
My first thought was, that is pretty awesome.
After thinking about it and reading your comment my thoughts are, don’t nuclear reactors on earth take years to build? This process seems extremely difficult. Solar power makes so much sense.
NASA has already built prototype reactors for this purpose. They’re small, highly efficient, and incredibly safe. The main thing is that the scale of power generation is vastly different here. A terrestrial nuclear reactor is generating hundreds of megawatts of electricity from (up to) gigawatts of thermal energy. We don’t need that much power for a small moon base. 10-100 kilowatts would be just fine, especially if it’s serving to supplement solar panels or batteries.
Nuclear power does have a really valid use-case in space. Solar panels should always be used first and foremost, but there are just times where they’re not going to be enough.
Please don’t fuck up the moon. It’s big and boring but it does a lot by just being there and doing “nothing”.
Literally how could we? It’s a big rock, it has no ecosystem whatsoever, and any effort to live there someday would require environmentally sealed and radiation resistant structures. Degrading what it does to earth would require significantly altering it’s mass or orbit, which would require an amount of energy that isn’t in the cards for a long time to come even optimistically.
someone could muck up the viewable side surface but it’d take forever to do that
it would be cool seeing a dot on it and knowing it’s a human structure that’s definitely doing energy in space wrong but still a cool endeavor
If a moon with city lights doesn’t awaken the sci-fi nerd in everyone then I don’t know what to say.
Let’s just agree to keep the dark side dark for telescopes.
Trying to set the moon up as a military base or start an arms race to control the most of it, is kind of ruining it, but hey move fast and break things, is what led us to fuck things up here. Let’s go and try it on the nearest celestial object too. That’s the most logical thing to do.
And just because the technology and resource to manage it better isn’t here yet, why not start early? That works out just as planned every time on earth. It would be a piece of cake on the moon.
President Donald Trump has prioritized U.S. dominance in what one senior NASA official described to Politico as “the second space race.”
You guys never learn and it shows.
I expect the tides to cease and a lot of meteor showers in the future.
Isn’t it illegal to transport fissile material into space?
Illegal may be the incorrect way to say it
There are international treaties agreeing that countries will not do that
Voyager 1 used Nuclear power I believe
*used. it is still going. :)
\m/ \m/
You are correct Voyager is metal
Many space probes and landers/rovers used RTGs. The treaty doesnt forbid nuclear fuel in space, only weapons of mass destruction.
Pretty much every inter planetary satellite has a reactor for power. Not all reactive material is considered fissile.
This is changing as solar panels get lighter and more efficient. Galileo studied Jupiter in the 90s and was powered by an RTG, but Juno and Europa Clipper are both using solar panels to study the same body.
DJT: I am the law.
No honey the US is falling apart but it is nice to have dreams.
deleted by creator
Really expensive to get fuel there on a regular schedule
Ok but do we go to the moon on a regular schedule or have any reason to?
Science, research, observations, intelligence, etc.
Okaaaaayyy…
Don’t even worry about it
Blow the Moon.
