ONE SMALL STEP . . .

@farmerman,

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Jut one nuke rocket accident could cause immeasurable regional damage.

How?

First you would not be launching on the Florida coast but in the middle of nowhere with a flight path that does not go over any large population centers.

Nuclear bombs/devices unlike thousands of ton of rocket fuel do not go off due to an accident and making the shell of the nuclear devices able to stand any likely accident and not break open is more then doable.

The main risk is having a few tens of thousands of tons falling on your head and that would not do immeasurable regional damage even if it might be hard on the person it fall on.

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@farmerman,

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

How many coal miners deaths, how many hundreds of square miles of ruin land from strip mining of coal, how many water sources that are unusable, how many areas with decades long underground fires burning in coal seams with all manner of toxic fumes being release?

Not counting the time or two that coal mining dams had fail wiping out towns downriver.

Quote:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dam-collapses-in-west-virginia

A dam collapses in West Virginia on this day in 1972, flooding a valley and killing 118 people. Another 4,000 people were left homeless.

Coal mining was the chief industry in Logan County, West Virginia, in the 1970s. Such mining poses many environmental complications and first among them is safe disposal of the byproduct, known as tailings. If the tailings are dumped on hills, they can cause landslides. If placed in valleys, they can block streams and cause flooding.

In West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Valley, tailings from area coal mines were used to dam Buffalo Creek. Tailings can however be unstable, especially in heavy rain. In February 1972, three days of rain exacerbated two small dam breaks that had occurred several years earlier. On February 26 at 8:01 a.m., the dam burst, unleashing a 20-foot wall of water that roared into the valley.

About 4,000 people were living in 17 towns and villages in Buffalo Creek Valley at the time. Hundreds of homes and buildings were swept away by the powerful flood. Though estimates of the death toll vary, it is believed that at least 118 people lost their lives. The Buffalo Mining Company, which was responsible for the tailings, was forced to pay $30 million in damages. ,

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@BillRM,

How old is coaliningcompared to nukes. Your stretching quite a bit. We now understand the risks from coal and are slowly moving away from it. Coal is watched over by a huge special interest lobby.
"Clean coal" I kind of an oxymoron. So does that mean, by your logic, that we do the same in the nuke industry?

Germany is moving away from nukes, and Japan is seriously thinking about all this too. We have a bounty of nat gas that gives us about a 50 to 100 year "cushion" (we are still finding new gas deposits in different geologic (deeper) basins like the Utica, the Chatanooga, the Salina, etc etc.
I don't believe you can make a compelling argument for nuke rockets by comparing it to the ravages of coal mining an then asking which is worse.
MY big concern is China listening to your logic and moving ahead with nuke "rocketry"

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@farmerman,

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How old is coaliningcompared to nukes. Your stretching quite a bit. We now understand the risks from coal and are slowly moving away from it. Coal is watched over by a huge special interest lobby.

The point is that no manner of generating power is either risk free or does not have an impact on the environment and of the major means of power generation nuclear have proven less harmful and safer then most.

Quote:

Germany is moving away from nukes, and Japan is seriously thinking about all this too. We have a bounty of nat gas that gives us about a 50 to 100 year "cushion"

If I remember correctly Germany needed to back step on that idea and any reduction from nuke power will just be replaced by France nuclear plants generated power for sale to them. Sometime the outcome of the green party nonsense in Europe can be amusing.

Next nature gas productions methods have all kind of risks to the environment such as ground water contamination and earthquakes of all things. An of course any such power sources is adding to the CO2 load where nuke power does not.

You seems to have a somewhat unreasonable fear of nuclear power in all it aspects.

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@BillRM,

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The point is that no manner of generating power is either risk free or does not have an impact on the environment and of the major means of power generation nuclear have proven less harmful and safer then most

Youre being disingenuous again. The issue of coal is one of a cleanup of contamination and ruin from PAST PRACTICES. (were gonna be ratcheting down coal ). The time is 2014 not 1875. The rule of the game now is to try to control nd minimize as much risk as possible

Contamination by gas extraction IS NOT an inevitability. The "ground water contamination" issue has never been even documented by anyone including EPA studies.
I can say no more other than you are incorrect

Nuke plants ARE a BRIDGE TECHNOLOGY that looks like wont really be needed as much as was originally thought. Gas production throughout the orld is showing huger and huger reserves than we originally considered by never counting Basin" source rocks and migration paths" Due to the nature of extraction technology weve opned up as much as 1000% more gas fields than we originally thought we had.

AND, these are NOT fields where the Tropsch process is producing "non0fossil" gas. Its a batch of normal geologic basins that contain migrating or trapped gas from original geologic processes.(This is to disabuse Gungasnake from making silly Creationist claims about gas fields)

PS, this topic had migrated to "nuclear rockets"> Im not gonna keep up a twenty page running discussion with you. My last statement id that I don't think that nuclear rockets should be considered as lifting bodies to get crap into NEO's. We have better and much SAFR ways of accomplishing that without risking catastrophic results. I especially DO NOT trust the Chinese to do whats right .

FACT: Most all of the involved nations ABANDONED any further research into nuclear rockets and instead, went over to newer proposed technologies ,I believe, will be available to safely install needed materiel into space into staging areas for future solar system exploration . .
Calcs are already available for how spce elavators would decrease the per kilo cost of shipping fuel and supplies into NEO for transfer onto an ION PROPULSION Vehicle .

I reject your "Nukes from earth hypothesis"

You hvent given anything that would satisfy me that safety nd health concerns would be guaranteeable to a high degree of assurnce.
sI said, there were over 60 nuke PLNT ACCIDENTS jut since Chernobyl, and that includes several in France or Germany and Italy

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Youre being disingenuous again. The issue of coal is one of a cleanup of contamination and ruin from PAST PRACTICES. (were gonna be ratcheting down coal ). The time is 2014 not 1875. The rule of the game now is to try to control nd minimize as much risk as possible

You kidding me right as hardly a year go by with some group of miners are not dying in caves in and men are at this very moment are dying of black lung disease from being miners.

Next coal mining restraining pool dams still have safety problems by a PBS documentary. It likely only a matter of time before the next wall of water will hit some towns down stream.

An of course being downwind of a coal plant are far more likely to be harmful to your well being then a nuclear plant.

An gas is not the main solution to our energy needs and have problems drawbacks that are just a large as nuclear energy.

Now the nuclear US rocket programs was ended in the US for reasons that have nothing or very little to do with safety concerns or that it was not feasible and some of the top nuclear engineers of the time who was the designers of our cold war nuclear weapons supported the programs and some had taken part in the programs.

To this day there are experts in both nuclear energy and space technology that support the concept.

I will agree that because of the type of thinking that you had shown here that there is no chance of Western nuclear rockets granting us the freedom of the solar system and all we can do is hope that others societies that have not gotten to the point that we have will open up the solar system for all of us.

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Calcs are already available for how spce elavators would decrease the per kilo cost of shipping fuel and supplies into NEO for transfer onto an ION PROPULSION Vehicle .

Space elevators at our current level of technology is a fantasy if a wonderful fantasy.

We do not have and likely will not have a material that would be strong enough to support 24,000 miles plus cables or without nuclear rocket technology are we going to be putting thousands of men into orbit and support them there to work on such projects as a space elevator.

With our non-nuclear technology we barely can keep a handful of men supported off the planet.

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@BillRM,

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An of course being downwind of a coal plant are far more likely to be harmful to your well being then a nuclear plant

That quite untrue. ALL radioactive elements are conservative (They ionize in water like a salt nd decay products like tritium, radon etc are even more deadly.

The folks that were "unconcerned bout environmental effects from Fukushima are all singing different tunes today."

AS I sid, any nuke "rockets" may be quite useful as "interplanetary engines" BUT NOT from the earth to NEO, its waay to big a risk.

Any comparisons over coal mining tech is based on coals "residual effects".

s I said, this is 2014 and ALL mining must come up to code with
NESHAPS in order to minimize risk to miners and the environment. This is NOT 1800's. We don't hve a "What the hell all activities are dangerous so lets just say "**** it" and hope nothing breaks"
That's just stupid engineering.
As far as gas "Not being a bridge fuel itself" I think you could do some more reading at how the reserves keep rising worldwide.

Youre trying to establish a fraudulent arguing point. I AM DEAD SET AGAINST NUKE ROCKETS LEAVING THE EARTH. HOWEVER, Im on record in favor of local (small reactor nuke power especially as we learn more about using nuke fuels that don't go critical(like Th). I was doing a bit of reading about the FUTURE of space exploration and a nuke power plant of Pu239 is being looked at for EXTRA EARTH and DEEP SPACE deployment. There is, as I read, NO PLAN to build a multistage nuke rocket for blasting off fom earth. If you find something about that.,let me know. (I want to write my congressmen and complain). I don't think youll find any planned "Nuke rockets from Cape Kennedy or any other space drome on the planet earth-SAFETY CONCERNS WOULD NOT ALLOW IT-I think even the Chinese wouldn't attempt it)

We will look at deployment of ionic engines and nuke plants to be used once the thing is built and constructed in space. As it stands, using a Pu 239 plant for heating H an ejecting hot H as a Newtonian response is about as safe as we can make it for the crew but the reactor/engines will probably be located at the end of a long scaffolding to provide some distance to the reactor /engines

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@farmerman,

Once more you need sheer power to get into earth orbit after that you can used all manner of propulsion systems to get anywhere in the solar system.

It could be nuclear or solar sails or ion/electric power by solar cells or nuke batteries and so on.

Hell you could hook up some ion engines to the international space station and as long as you are not in a hurry get anywhere in the solar system,

The challenge is in the first 100 miles of the journey in other word and space elevators are a fantasy that might become fact in a fairly far future that can not be build now for the reasons I had already stated.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

AS I sid, any nuke "rockets" may be quite useful as "interplanetary engines" BUT NOT from the earth to NEO, its waay to big a risk.

yep

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Under the terms of the 1972 Space Liability Convention, a state which launches an object into space is liable for damages caused by that object.[1] For the recovery efforts, the Canadian government billed the Soviet Union $6,041,174.70 for actual expenses and additional compensation for future unpredicted expenses; the U.S.S.R. eventually paid the sum of C$3 million.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

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A space elevator is not a fantasy for technological reaons, it's a fantasy for political reasons. We can do everything that would be needed. What is lacking the is the will to do it.

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@Setanta,

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A space elevator is not a fantasy for technological reaons, it's a fantasy for political reasons. We can do everything that would be needed. What is lacking the is the will to do it.

Well I do not know if we can bend the laws of physics to be able to find a material strong enough to make a 24,000 miles cable out of that will not only support it own weight but the stresses of such a structure.

Once more if we have an overriding desire to have the freedom of the solar system we could have it within ten years or so by going the route of nuclear rockets as that had been within our technology abilities for forty years or so.

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@BillRM,

A bit of a digression Bill, but I just finished a book that, based on what you've written in this thread, is one that I think you might enjoy.

It's The Martian by Andy Weir

Amazon

You are probably better equipped to determine if the feats of engineering pulled off by the main character are plausible, but they certainly seemed so to me.

The characters are a bit two-dimensional (maybe 2.75 dimensional) is typical sci-fi fashion (the main character is something of an irreverent wise-cracker) but the plot isn't predictable and the pace is great.

If you give it a try, let me know what you think.

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@BillRM,

That doesn't make it (so-called "nuclear rockets") a good idea. Carbon/ceramic fiber could easily fill the bill for the cable.

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@Setanta,

I don't see any "Bending" of laws of physics in the "space elevator" idea. Its Merely perfecting a technology based upon how space works.
Weve already used Lagrange points and geostationary distances .

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@farmerman,

A multination study was done on the concept few years ago nd it too, came to the conclusion that technology problems based on concerns over strength of materials in the dynamic environment are NOT the limiting issue. Politics is.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

That doesn't make it (so-called "nuclear rockets") a good idea. Carbon/ceramic fiber could easily fill the bill for the cable.

That would be some damn carbon/ceramic cable 24,000 miles long with meg tons of stress on it beside the god know how many 100,000 of thousands of tons on it by it weight alone.

Love if we could build such an elevator but it will be a cold day in hell before anything we could dream up would serve for the cables.

If anyone know anyone in the Chinese space program it might be useful for the future of mankind to suggest to him or her that their space program could completely excess both the US and Russian programs and place fairly large colonies on both the moon and Mars within ten years or so.

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@BillRM,

You really know nothing about this subject, do you? A terminus at one of the Lagrange points would obviate the problem of the weight of the cable for a space elevator--but you obviously don't understand that. Do you even know what the Lagrange points are?

What a maroon.

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By the way, your English still sucks . . . "could completely excess both the US and Russian programs . . . " --what the hell is that supposed to mean?

A colony on Mars in ten years? Ah-hahahahahahahahahahahahaha . . .

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@Setanta,

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A terminus at one of the Lagrange points would obviate the problem of the weight of the cable for a space elevator--but you obviously don't understand that. Do you even know what the Lagrange points are?

Unlike you I know what Lagrangians points happen to be and know the following.

Lagrangians points are not going to made a cable mass nothing or with no meg tons of tension on it nor does it have or can have a damn thing to do with a space elevator!!!!!!!

The end point of a space elevator needs to be first of all above the earth equator and the counter mass need to be slightly above the geocentric orbit. No where near any of earth Lagrangians points either, by at least a few hundreds thousands miles, with the sun or the moon.

Any other location including the lagrangian points would result in the cable wrapping around the earth as if you have not taken note the earth does turn roughly every 24 hours!!!!!!!!

A tiny bit of knowledge in your case is a dangerous thing!! In any case see the link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#Spacecraft_at_Sun.E2.80.93Earth_L1

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@Setanta,

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By the way, your English still sucks .

.

My English surely does sucks however your understanding of celestial mechanics suck far far far worst then my English!!!!!!!!

Before I was out of high school I was playing around with Hohmann transfer orbits between planets and such for the fun of it.............using a book of ten places or more places log log tables and a mechanical adding machine to do the calculations.

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