4 ms·

The standard argument against that is that the risk of contamination (of the athmosphere or basically anything) in case of a rocket accident is too high.

dotnet00 3y ago
And the standard response to that should be to how that too is kind of a load of FUD. The safety requirements for a rocket to carry nuclear material in the US are higher than those for carrying crew. The material would be flying on a rocket that has proven itself over many flights, with a rigorously tested design, with a safe abort mode for every point along the way to orbit and on top of that, stored in a vessel such that it wouldn't be released into the atmosphere if a failure still occurred. The proper answer is that it'd be absurdly expensive and completely pointless. After all, why bring it down to Mars? Just put it in an appropriate orbit around the Sun and you're basically guaranteed to never see it again unless you want to.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Rockets are still by far the most dangerous mode of transportation developed. It's by no means safe to fly a rocket, even though it may be safer than it was before.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    They're certainly safe enough that the primary risk is not of them exploding. Hell, the most current iteration of Falcon 9 has only ever had one failure, which was early in its lifetime before it was crew rated. In general, the vast majority of rocket explosions in the US ever since we got past the phase of having to build two of everything in-case one launch failed have been ones which were either still in active development or weren't anywhere near nuclear rated at the time anyway. The media loves to report on exploding rockets, but by and far that is not the norm and if you're flying on a rocket that is allowed to carry even nuclear material, you're essentially guaranteed to be safe (if not necessarily guaranteed to make it to orbit).
    - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      even assuming the percentages have improved significantly since 2014 when this was written https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/if-planes-failed-like-space-shuttles-272-would-crash-daily/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/if-planes-failed-li... I would expect it is still probably high enough you wouldn't want it carrying nuclear waste.
      - mcv 3y ago
        Lets see if we can go a couple of decades without any rocket explosions at all before we risk burning up radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere. I don't want to trust this on mere claims of safety, I want to trust statistics on large, non-cherry-picked numbers of launches.
        dotnet00 3y ago
        Have we gone decades without plane crashes? What's with this insanity that seems to grip even supposedly educated science-minded people whenever something involves nuclear technology?
        mcv 3y ago
        > Have we gone decades without plane crashes? Do you think we should be using planes to send nuclear waste into the upper atmosphere? > What's with this insanity that seems to grip even supposedly educated science-minded people whenever something involves nuclear technology? Maybe the educated science-minded people have a better understanding of some of the risks involved. I once heard that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the upper atmosphere would be enough to wipe out humanity. Now I don't know the math behind that claim, and of course I know that most nuclear waste is not plutonium, but I would much rather be safe than sorry with things like burning up radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere. Especially in the face of superior alternatives like putting it deep underground.
        dotnet00 3y ago
- verve_rat 3y ago
  A number of people have died in launches gone wrong. Tragic, but fortunately dead people don't tend to irradiate the ocean when that happens.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Those incidents are exactly why we have requirements like the ability to safely abort (ie separate the capsule and safely bring it down to somewhere near a coast for quick recovery, or abort to orbit) at every point of the flight, which those vehicles did not have but current ones do.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > The material would be flying on a rocket that has proven itself over many flights How old are reusable rockets? 5 years? And up until that point they were considered worse because they weren't new. I think you're overstating how safe it is to put nuclear waste onto a maybe bomb.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    By proven itself over many flights, I wasn't quite referring to reuse, but rather just that by the time it is flying people - unless it's something that Congress couldn't care less about killing people with (like SLS) - the class of rocket will have flown many times. Also, reusable rockets were not considered worse. It was obvious to everyone that in a technical sense, a properly designed reusable rocket was better (ie not the Shuttle, where most of its design was dictated by missions it might be required to handle). What other companies/agencies disagreed on was if they were economical. For example, ULA expected to have to fly a booster 10 times to break even on it for reuse and Arianespace similarly believed that they weren't having to launch often enough to justify a reusable rocket, arguing that if they went reusable they'd just have a bunch of people with nothing to do most of the time.

dotnet00 3y ago

And the standard response to that should be to how that too is kind of a load of FUD. The safety requirements for a rocket to carry nuclear material in the US are higher than those for carrying crew. The material would be flying on a rocket that has proven itself over many flights, with a rigorously tested design, with a safe abort mode for every point along the way to orbit and on top of that, stored in a vessel such that it wouldn't be released into the atmosphere if a failure still occurred. The proper answer is that it'd be absurdly expensive and completely pointless. After all, why bring it down to Mars? Just put it in an appropriate orbit around the Sun and you're basically guaranteed to never see it again unless you want to.

tsimionescu 3y ago
Rockets are still by far the most dangerous mode of transportation developed. It's by no means safe to fly a rocket, even though it may be safer than it was before.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  They're certainly safe enough that the primary risk is not of them exploding. Hell, the most current iteration of Falcon 9 has only ever had one failure, which was early in its lifetime before it was crew rated. In general, the vast majority of rocket explosions in the US ever since we got past the phase of having to build two of everything in-case one launch failed have been ones which were either still in active development or weren't anywhere near nuclear rated at the time anyway. The media loves to report on exploding rockets, but by and far that is not the norm and if you're flying on a rocket that is allowed to carry even nuclear material, you're essentially guaranteed to be safe (if not necessarily guaranteed to make it to orbit).
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    even assuming the percentages have improved significantly since 2014 when this was written https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/if-planes-failed-like-space-shuttles-272-would-crash-daily/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/if-planes-failed-li... I would expect it is still probably high enough you wouldn't want it carrying nuclear waste.
    - mcv 3y ago
      Lets see if we can go a couple of decades without any rocket explosions at all before we risk burning up radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere. I don't want to trust this on mere claims of safety, I want to trust statistics on large, non-cherry-picked numbers of launches.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        Have we gone decades without plane crashes? What's with this insanity that seems to grip even supposedly educated science-minded people whenever something involves nuclear technology?
        mcv 3y ago
        > Have we gone decades without plane crashes? Do you think we should be using planes to send nuclear waste into the upper atmosphere? > What's with this insanity that seems to grip even supposedly educated science-minded people whenever something involves nuclear technology? Maybe the educated science-minded people have a better understanding of some of the risks involved. I once heard that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the upper atmosphere would be enough to wipe out humanity. Now I don't know the math behind that claim, and of course I know that most nuclear waste is not plutonium, but I would much rather be safe than sorry with things like burning up radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere. Especially in the face of superior alternatives like putting it deep underground.
        dotnet00 3y ago
verve_rat 3y ago
A number of people have died in launches gone wrong. Tragic, but fortunately dead people don't tend to irradiate the ocean when that happens.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Those incidents are exactly why we have requirements like the ability to safely abort (ie separate the capsule and safely bring it down to somewhere near a coast for quick recovery, or abort to orbit) at every point of the flight, which those vehicles did not have but current ones do.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> The material would be flying on a rocket that has proven itself over many flights How old are reusable rockets? 5 years? And up until that point they were considered worse because they weren't new. I think you're overstating how safe it is to put nuclear waste onto a maybe bomb.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  By proven itself over many flights, I wasn't quite referring to reuse, but rather just that by the time it is flying people - unless it's something that Congress couldn't care less about killing people with (like SLS) - the class of rocket will have flown many times. Also, reusable rockets were not considered worse. It was obvious to everyone that in a technical sense, a properly designed reusable rocket was better (ie not the Shuttle, where most of its design was dictated by missions it might be required to handle). What other companies/agencies disagreed on was if they were economical. For example, ULA expected to have to fly a booster 10 times to break even on it for reuse and Arianespace similarly believed that they weren't having to launch often enough to justify a reusable rocket, arguing that if they went reusable they'd just have a bunch of people with nothing to do most of the time.