10 ms·
> Unlike Amundsen's, such a station can have a nuclear reactor, with decades worth of fuel. Tangentially, McMurdo (the coastal Antarctica base) did have a nucl
by AceJohnny2 4y ago
> Unlike Amundsen's, such a station can have a nuclear reactor, with decades worth of fuel.
Tangentially, McMurdo (the coastal Antarctica base) did have a nuclear reactor for a bit. It didn't go great.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
- fm2606 4y agoVery interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
- mjevans 4y agoAn unfortunate early design. Hopefully the engineering knowledge and access to far better design tools that have developed in the interleaving ~50 years would allow for a much better design today. Though my hopes must be tempered by the prospect of greed. It would be better if the government(s) created an open design which could reuse off the shelf or components that any corporation could compete to create.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoEh, no.. a failed concept, to grasp the techological deep roots needed to supply something with specialists and machinery at all times, at a location that is 9 months off limits.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoDARPA and NASA are currently developing designs to do exactly that under Kilopower, Megapower, and similar programs. Enabling long duration unmanned deep space missions is explicitly one of NASA's goals with this.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoAnd then the helium and hydrogen, turned the containement vessel into a sieve over the long run, pushing the vessel of course. The end.