Posted on 03/08/2005 6:27:41 PM PST by KevinDavis
The US space agency (Nasa) is progressing with ambitious plans to explore the Solar System using nuclear power.
Their hope, eventually, is to use electricity generated by nuclear power to propel a space probe and power its instruments on a voyage to the icy moons of Jupiter, satellites that just possibly might harbour life beneath their ice.
Before then, nuclear technology could be proved with a less ambitious mission, perhaps a nuclear-powered probe to the Moon.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Any life on the Jovian satellites will be unicellular. For multicellulars to evolve, there has to be plentiful oxygen, and for there to be plentiful oxygen there has to be plants. I don't think the sunlight at Jupiter's orbit is sufficient to support extensive plant life.
I agree with you on that, unless we turn Jupiter into a sun.
Nuclear power is EVIL.
Please sign out petition to turn off the sun.
Petition denied. As everyone knows, the sun shines for higher strategeric purposes, pursuant to explicit instructions of Karl Rove.
Would you want to mess with that?
I thought Cassini was nuclear? Or were all those long-hair protestors at the launch site misled?
Yes it nuclear, however it was using nuclear batteries to keep it going not nuclear propulsion.
NASA is doing some neat things with propulsion technology short of a nuclear powered rocket. The Dawn mission will be powered by the second Ion Engine after DS1 validated the technology. The New Horizons Pluto mission will get a speed boost from an Atlas rocket that should get it's speed up around 90,000 mph initially.
A viable nuclear rocket is at least 10 years away and that's only if it gets a final go ahead from a timid (afraid of the enviros) congress.
This would have never had happen under a Kerry administration...
We'll have to get a few nuke power plants going on those satellites, and warm 'em up!!!;)
The development timeline on this thing is so long that it will have to face many budget reviews and criticism from the sky is falling crowd before it gets built.
It could easily be killed by future administrations or even NASA if they get into a budget sqeeze. Even though this is far and away the best solution for future deep space missions it has lots of enemies and will be lucky to make it to the flight phase.
Keep in mind ion engines are fuel efficient, not fast. It took SMART-1, what, a year to hit the moon? The fastest way to get to Pluto before the atmosphere freezes is to go the conventional route.
Ion engines shine on longer missions where their steady acceleration is of more use. The ESA moon shot was just a way to test fly their version of an Ion engine.
The real major advantage of Ion engines is in their efficiency. They are ten times more efficient than chemical rockets meaning far less propellant and larger payloads. Even if they took longer the payoff in more science per probe is worth it in spades
The propulsion for the Pluto mission has alread been selected and as you suggest it's going to be conventional with a huge kick from an Atlas rocket and a Saturn (Jupiter?) gravity assist. The power supply will be radioisotope thermoelectric generators which rely on nuclear decay. I think it's slated or launch early next year.
LOL
The launch window opens on January 11, 2006. Jupiter Gravity Assist follows in 2007. Pluto-Charon arrival is slated for 2015. Without the RTG, the mission is hosed -- you can't go solar past Jupiter. However, the RTG will keep the spacecraft at a nice toasty 10 Celsius even at Pluto.
You misunderstand the physics. Over the long travel time and distance to Pluto, the effect of nearly constant acceleration adds up to a LOT of velocity. SMART-1 to the Moon was a short distance with a lot of time just going for orbit insertion, not point-to-point travel. Prometheus and others of its type will make long-distance trips in very foreshortened times.
i always thought the coolest space propulsion idea to come out of the fifties was the plan to detonate an atomic bomb behind a spacecraft to push it...
Depends on the trip and the mass of the spacecraft. IIRC, Prometheus would take years to get to Jupiter, even though New Horizons will reach Jupiter in one year. The advantage to Prometheus, besides having almost too much power, was that the ion engine would allow it to change orbits with regularity.
Remember, assuming constant acceleration and negligible starting velocity, travel time = SQRT (2*distance/acceleration). If we had Prometheus-level technology now, we *might* be able to get to Pluto faster. However, since we've dawdled instead of developing ion engines further, we're forced to use chemical rockets for the forseeable future.
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