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“NASA believes it will need 40 kilowatts of power for the first lunar inhabitants” Sounds like it’ll only need to be a small reactor, something akin to what go
by orobinson 4y ago
“NASA believes it will need 40 kilowatts of power for the first lunar inhabitants”
Sounds like it’ll only need to be a small reactor, something akin to what goes in a submarine. I’m no expert but presumably something like that is significantly quicker and easier to build than a megawatt scale nuclear reactor. The obvious challenge that the bidding companies will have to solve in the next 8 years is how to get the materials into space safely and assemble them on the moon.
- mattashii 4y agoAnd, not to forget, how to reject the 40+ kW of heat, using a package that can be shipped efficiently. Submarines and other ships can put their heat into the surrounding water, but no such easy sink is available on the moon.
- danielvf 4y agoSubmarine reactors are between 500 and 50 megawatts - so this proposal is for something making 1000x less power than the the smallest active submarine reactor.