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Wind and solar also don't work well for powering spacecraft, space stations, or anywhere else in the solar system further away from the sun than Earth. The surf
by njarboe 8y ago
Wind and solar also don't work well for powering spacecraft, space stations, or anywhere else in the solar system further away from the sun than Earth. The surface of Mars or Ceres, for example.
- elihu 8y agoNuclear actually doesn't work well for spacecraft either, because there's no convenient way to get rid of all that excess heat. It might work well on Mars or Ceres, but solar isn't all that bad; you'd just need more panels for an equivalent amount of energy as you'd need on Earth.
- njarboe 8y agoFor nuclear propulsion you just use the propellant to cool the reactor. You are still going to want to have a bunch of propellant with a fission or fusion reactor and, like a chemical engine, you can use it as a coolant when it enters the engine.
- max76 8y agoSolar has a few problems for spacecraft, especially when talking about objects not in an earth-centric orbit. 1. The further the spacecraft is from the sun the less efficient solar panels are. 2. Solar panels are a pretty heavy thing to launch. 3. Solar panels have a tendency to degrade in performance over decades.
- russdill 8y agoRTG's are pretty damn good for spacecraft. But they are dangerous to launch. The nice thing about fusion is that a RUD doesn't matter from a nuclear perspective.
- wlesieutre 8y agoAnd we aren't making as much plutonium-238 as we did in the cold war
- wlesieutre 8y agoI stand corrected https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25806535/plutonium-shortage/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25806535/plutonium-s...
- njarboe 8y agoI'm talking about spacecraft for humans. Going fast is much more important for humans than robots and nuclear is the only way to go. (BTW RTG's are also nuclear, just really low power and don't allow for adjustable output)