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It's nuclear weapons that nobody wants in space, not nuclear reactors. Almost every outer solar system probe has had a nuclear power source that relied on deca
by Symmetry 10y ago
It's nuclear weapons that nobody wants in space, not nuclear reactors. Almost every outer solar system probe has had a nuclear power source that relied on decay and the Russians even put reactors on one series of satellites IIRC.
And people are working on building reactors. NASA has plans for one[1] in the 100kWe range. But mostly spacecraft have had low power needs and so people haven't wanted to deal with the complexity of a reactor.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Affordable_Fission_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Affordable_Fission_Engine
- WalterBright 10y agoI'd rather have nuclear weapons in space than on earth.
- DanHulton 10y agoI don't think you would. They're a lot more potentially dangerous up there.
- Symmetry 9y agoNuclear weapons in space can be dropped on Earth with very little warning. An ICBM has an obvious launch flare but nuclear weapon equipped satellites might be able to deploy their nukes with almost no warning.
- knz 9y ago> It's nuclear weapons that nobody wants in space I should have been more specific - isn't the fear that nuclear power generation in space could be utilized as part of a weapons program.
- Symmetry 9y agoDeveloping the infrastructure to take moderately enriched Uranium and enrich it to something weapons grade is likely to be outside the industrial scope of any space facility for quite a while. When we've got 10,000,000 people living on the Moon we can use the same enforcement regime as we do with small countries on Earth. Until then it's not worth worrying about.