ONE SMALL STEP . . .

@BillRM,

Im not talking about "all ideas of the 50s', Im only interested in NUCLEAR PLNES AND ROCKETS (those that are to blast off from the earths surface and into space).

OK, we say that the model was conventional (Estes rocket engine packs in a multi stage configuration). What would the exhaust gases from a NUKE ROCKET be?

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@Lustig Andrei,

Quote:

See Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Wonderful book but they was using a rail gun for cargo from the moon to the earth not from the earth to the moon even those there was talks of building such a system in the book to return cargo back to the moon.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

OK, we say that the model was conventional (Estes rocket engine packs in a multi stage configuration). What would the exhaust gases from a NUKE ROCKET be?

The British interplanetary society have all the details on their website you would care for and I would suggest going to their website.

Without looking myself off hand I would assume that the mass of the tiny devices being converted into star temperate plasma would be more then enough to kick the thrust plate and of course while still in the atmosphere you have the atmosphere gasses also.

As I already stated top level engineers and scientists had play with the concept for two/three generations now using ever more powerful computer modeling and found no show stoppers.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

OK, we say that the model was conventional (Estes rocket engine packs in a multi stage configuration). What would the exhaust gases from a NUKE ROCKET be?

Maybe I am not understanding your question as with such a nuclear rocket you only have one stage as you would gain nothing by having stages in such a device.

With a Saturn rocket you burn the vast bulk of the mass of the rocket by way of the rocket fuel and it make sense to have stages but in a nuclear thrust rocket the amount of mass you lose in getting into orbit is a tiny percent of the total mass of the rocket.

Not ten percent of the total mass roughly reach orbit as in the Saturn but more like 99.99 percent reach orbit with a nuclear rocket of this type.

Oh the speed of the gas/plasma of a nuclear rocket compare to a non-nuclear rockets are thousand of time greater so you do not need the mass of gas that you do in normal rockets to get the thrust levels or the special impulse is msut greater.

Somewhere I am sure I have the notebook of rocket equations to explain it by math if you would care for me to do so.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

I think you are reading stuff from the 50's an 60's.

Another footnote the technology of the 1950s and 1960s was good enough to get us to the moon.

There is nothing wrong with looking at the feasibility of a nuclear rocket program only due to it dating back to the 1960s.

The physic was solid in the 1960s and still is solid in the year 2014 having been look at in an ongoing basic since the 1960s by people far more qualify then either I or you happen to be to do so.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Im not talking about "all ideas of the 50s', Im only interested in NUCLEAR PLNES AND ROCKETS (those that are to blast off from the earths surface and into space).

You might be interested in this article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28439159

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@izzythepush,

Interesting and it is an interesting footnote that the nuclear engines was removed from the Savannah and conventional engines put in their place and that is similar to the fate of the ship that it was name after the SS Savannah the first ship that cross the Atlantic under just stream in 1819 and later have it engines removed and turn into a sailing ship.

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@izzythepush,

I think that container cargoing led to these 180000 Ton freighters.
Savannah was kind of small really.

Nuke warships, borrowing from Bill, have the infrastructure already in place from day 1. Commercial ships, not so much.

BUT THE WHOLE POINT IS nuke rockets going from earth (to anywhere0 are probably NEVER gonna happen. Therell be way too much pushback nd for good reasons. Nobody can guarantee safety of these things.

Space "elevators" feasibility has indicated that these things can reduce the payload costs to a 100th of what we pay today per pound.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Space "elevators" feasibility has indicated that these things can reduce the payload costs to a 100th of what we pay today per pound.

Far more then that the only little problem is that there is no way of doing so without the ability to move large numbers of people into orbit and a few thousand meg tons of mass into orbit as a needed counter mass.

Not only that but should it fail for any reason it would not be very pretty for anyone under the footprint of the debris field as most of that mass will not be in orbit.

That being why you need an asteroid of mass on the one end that is going slightly faster then it naturally would at that distant from earth.

If the Beanstalk break almost all of it except the counter mass is coming back to earth and the counter weight is going on a trip that might in the future hit the earth.

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@farmerman,

I liked the idea of the Ford Nucleon. Looks like the sort of thing Captain Scarlet would drive.

http://assets.hemmings.com/story_image/253371-1000-0.jpg?rev=2

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

Nobody can guarantee safety of these things.

By the way what objects on this planet or any other can you guarantee as being safe?

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@BillRM,

we try to minimize risk, not accept it as an inevitability. ALL means for NEO will need new facilities ND INFRSTRUCTURE. aN elevator, or Lofson loop, or railgun will need a base and a receptor (Why not assemble all this stuff t Lgrnge Point or provide just enough Newtonian force to inrt into orbit. A nuclear rocket base will also require huge investments for assembly takeoff nd safety control. Don't think tht ANY nuke rocket would be allowed to be considered without shielding.
I think nuke ANYTHING from the planets surface will be a non starter

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@izzythepush,

Imagine that. Notice how the "Nuclleon" hs caught on with the buying public. It sorta looks like a peddle car .

I recall tht the "re emergence" of the nuclear industry is being considered with community based applications, not a "One technology fits everything mentality. Nuclear cars and planes and rockets from earth, will always have a safety concern.
Using the navy as an example of how to make it work needs to be revisited based on the fact that the navy had already owned and operated its own facilities. Even so, we have had nuke sub accidents that have only spared us of radioactive steam contamination because the damn boats sank in deep waters which is a huge natural shielding. I recall, one summer, they brought a nuke sub down through the Gulf of Maine to gt some "body and fender" work on one of their planes. They quarantined the normal sea lanes for two days as they brought the sub down to the Penobcot to get work done at a crib in Bath Iron works.
Once and awhile they bring a nuke sub up the Delaware and they define clear quarantine zones for all shipping and boating while the sub is in transit at the surface.

They don't cavalierly **** around with their boats.
I hope George ob shows up with some real world tales. He was a skipper of a nuke carrier and probably has the most real world xperience with nuke "vehicular" power .

everything"

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@farmerman,

Quote:

ALL means for NEO will need new facilities ND INFRSTRUCTURE. aN elevator, or Lofson loop, or railgun will need a base and a receptor (Why not assemble all this stuff t Lgrnge Point or provide just enough Newtonian force to inrt into orbit.

Lord nuclear rockets are the only technology for lifting huge masses and great numbers of people off earth that is within our foreseeable technology abilities hell it had been within our technology abilities for the last forty to fifty years.

In order to do all the other wonderful wonderful things such as elevators to orbit even when we do have the technology to do so required us to be able to have the means in place to move things like asteroids around the solar system and support tens of thousands of men and women labor force off earth.

We are at the technology stage of sailing ships and you are suggesting that somehow we just forget about sailing ships and go directly to airliners and large cargo planes at the point that the Wrights brothers are four hundreds years in the future.

Or let not fool around with tubes electronic in the 1900s but wait until solid stage have been invented.

You need to learn how to work copper and turn it into useful tools before you can go on to tool steel tools.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

Lord nuclear rockets are the only technology for lifting huge masses and great numbers of people off earth that is within our foreseeable technology abilities hell it had been within our technology abilities for the last forty to fifty years.

naah, youre wrong, weve had a lot longer experience with chemical rockets or magnetometrics . Theres really no big "leap of theory" for something like an elevator. Its more a problem of politics and lndmasses in sovereign nations. (I see it more of a "treaty problem" than one of a vast leap of technology.

A railgun has an acceleration of about 120 g's, that can be overcome by packaging (Of course we wouldn't send people on a rail gun projectile, just materiel.

Ive spent too long in U mining and Manhattan Project clean up to trust our strategic (and tactical) abilities with such a technology. Weve fucked up so much real estate with low levels of nuclear wastes .

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@farmerman,

Quote:

naah, youre wrong

Oh?

At great cost we are maintaining a few men off earth in low earth orbit, so without using nuclear rockets how do you suggest we get the tens of thousands to even to low earth orbit and maintain them while they are working on the first space elevator?

With the current non-nuclear technology we are using how do you suggest we will move an asteroid into high earth orbit to be the anchor "weight" for your elevator?

And that is assuming that all the "little" problems such as having cables strong enough to be used in a 24,000 miles structure have been overcome.

On the other hands the details of having a pulse nuclear rocket able to move many thousands of tons to orbit have been work out in details and from the word go we could be flying one in less then ten years.

Yes I know the West is no longer brave enough to do so but hopefully China or some other non-western nation will do so.

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@BillRM,

You seem to be totally ignoring the afety/health /environmental safety issues jut to be a tub thumper for "NUKE ROCKETRY"

Look, weve had over 60 significant accidents at nuke plants all over the world (including Frnce and Germany) SINCE CHERNOBYL.
Before Chernobyl there were several hundred incidents.

Jut one nuke rocket accident could cause immeasurable regional damage. (When the second shuttle disaster happened, I knew some principals of the company that got a huge contrct to find and clean up the pieces of shuttle that returned to earth. They found stuff from Texas to Georgia. I don't want to take that chance where we know such an accient will probably happen again, especially since weve got the abilities to do some tech development that isn't out of our present capabilities.
Ive always agreed that nuke power is a "Bridge technology" in major GIgawatt standing source power stations and even small yield power plants. I AM NOT FOR COLLECTING"NUCLEAR MOVING VIOLATIONS THAT COULD THREATEN ENTIRE STATES OR SMALL COUNTRIES"
. Look what happened with Chernobyl, then tell me you would trust the "Chinese nuclear space program" Hell, they still use duck taped bamboo for building scaffolding.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Look, weve had over 60 significant accidents at nuke plants all over the world (including Frnce and Germany) SINCE CHERNOBYL.
Before Chernobyl there were several hundred incidents.

An other then Chernobyl how many deaths? Chernobyl with a 1950s design with no containment dome.

All in all far more deaths and other harm being done by generating power by non-nuclear means.

Far more radiation for that matter being put into the atmosphere by coal burning in the US then by nuclear power plants.

No technology is risk free but nuclear power have a damn good safety record compare to others methods for generating power.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

so without using nuclear rockets how do you suggest we get the tens of thousands to even to low earth orbit and maintain them while they are working on the first space elevator?

space stations are already feasible way -points, they are already in the building stages (no matter I weve got them wrong, the technology is not beyond us anymore. (I understand that the biggest problems of the space stations are aesthetics (Dirt, odor, cross cultural senses of "neatness")

Deploying several railguns to eject payloads to Lagrange points for ultimate assembly of solar system missions would consist of being deployed on a space station, the design of which would be bsed upon a big enough station to act as a counter mass for the design payload.

In space, a nuclear (Newtonian style) engine would accelerate to .25C within the solar system (I hve NOT done any math Im just recalling what I read in S&T a decade or so ago). AN ION engine would take approximately 1.5 times that distance (The initil v^2 is the longest prt)

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@BillRM,

do e count direct only? how about animals? economic losses from "exclusion zones" should also be counted.

You are actually thinking like what Id expect the Chinese to do. (That's a bit scary for me)

1 Reply

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