From the article Sam Stone quoted: “But these technologies have come exclusively from the unmanned space program.”
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the manned space program is a shell of what it used to be? I’m not too sure that his conclusion necessarily follows from his reasons…
The devil is in the details.
If Bush announces a major push for Mars, there should be a target date announced as well. It was good enough for JFK: “We choose to go to Mars!”
If the SOTU push is just for increased funding for NTR programs, I’m happy but not all that impressed. Increasing funding for existing programs is page 3 (at best) news.
If the SOTU speech calls for a specific date to land men on Mars, and a big multi-program $$$ push to do so, then that could make a difference.
I eagerly await a few details.
Nuclear Reactor rocket? Bah. Bring back Orion’s Nuclear Pulse Rockets, and we can get a man on Mars by 2006, I’m bettin’. Hell, we can have him pull a few donuts around Deimos…
I can’t get my hopes up quite yet but believe me, I want to.
Could it have anything to do with the ambitious space programs other countries have announced recently? China gets to the moon but have they gotten to Mars? It would be a pretty sweeping statement that we intend to maintain American dominance in space exploration, and would certainly take focus away from NASA’s problems of late. Or would it? Not everyone shows the same enthusiasm for big ticket initiatives with questionable value. Many greens will likely stop listening once the N-word comes into the equation. And the problems here on Earth will cause many to suspect that W is merely trying to divert attention. Let them bitch, I want space exploration.
It’s not the “stop listening” part that’ll annoying me… it’s that they’ll do that in conjunction with “start screaming”.
Man’s gotta get into space. That’s all there is to it.
Won’t someone please think of the little green men that live there? Shouldn’t we ask them first?
If Bush gets this project going I may start to like him. I think a joint venture with the Russians would be a excellent idea. And further, get India and China the scrap their apparant race to the Moon and get in on the Mars Mission. It could work a lot better with their help. Need more funding? Just broadcast a public service announcement to China and India asking for a dollar from anyone who can spare it, then you’ve got an extra $2 billion ;). Plus I don’t see a problem with selling ad space to Coke or Microsoft or anyone else who wants it.
I think its sad that humanity has lost interest in space travel. If this project has the right PR it could rekindle the excitment of the Apollo misson. I for one would think that if a Mars bound nuclear powered shuttle launch was on TV it would get record ratings.
It’s been said already, but I’m all for it as long as they’re damn careful.
Remember, the Challenger wasn’t all that long ago. We would do well to remember that when things go wrong, they go very wrong, and with anything nuke it behooves us to think about that.
Challenger should be at the forefront of our minds… but not in the way that so many of us seem to do.
Challenger was a tragedy. I saw the footage again the other day, first time in years, and I realize that the same ‘kicked in the gut’ feeling I get from the WTC collapse footage is the one I get when I watch Challenger bloom into a fireball.
If we were to ask astronauts what we should have done, I am willing to bet the answe would have been “as soon as we find out what happened, fix it and get us back up ASAP. next month if possible”. The US was created with the attitude that expansion costs, and sometimes costs dearly.
The Soviet Union beat us in the space race. We were launching the shuttle 3-4 times a year, while a rocket a month was flying from Baikonaur. They knew the risks, and did not let them make them timid.
Now the Chinese are gearing up to do the same thing, and I will eat my hat if they are going to follow the pussyfooting of the US and othe Western countries.
We are the leaders in industry here. We, along with the Soviet Union, practically invented the idea of a space program. And now China and India are going to go to the moon, while we dump more money into “research and development”.
Screw that. It’s time to kick butt and take names. If George dumps money into the space program, and authorizes new projects with the far-reaching kind of results a nuclear rocket would give, so be it. Hopefully, the future histories will say that this is what he will be known for. The President that put new blood into the languishing US space program.
Well then, you can move to Earth 2 and crap it up with radioisotopes all you like. I didn’t volunteer for anything, and I’ll be damned if I live in a world in which every year or so another commercial nuclear rocket blows up.
Oddly enough, the US Navy has been running dozens of nuclear powerplants with no (AFAIK) problems.
And the odds are that they would be designed so that in the case of catastrophic failure, the radiants would be safely contained.
And I’m not sure, but I don’t think we have rockets blow up on their pads every year. Remember, we’re talking about NASA, not total global rocket launches.
As I said, my concern is not so much with a single launch as with widespread use. It seems like a nuclear rocket is a dead-end technology, meant purely for a repeat of apollo: rush to Mars just because, and then forget about going again for decades while workable space technology is developed.
Tristan, I present to you the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion. And here’s a Greenpeace site showing other possibilities, including Soviet/Russian problems, and yet another documented Soviet accident, the Lenin icebreaker, which had a total meltdown, that America didn’t know about for thirty years. And that’s not even to mention TMI, Chernobyl, and Cheylabinsk.
In reading about the Scorpion, it says that there is no radiological activity to speak of at the site, but if you’re looking for examples of nuclear safety, the Navy is probably not the place to look. I’m truly not disparaging the Navy, but two nuclear powered ships were lost at sea in 49 years. Who knows how many rockets could go bad in 49 years?
I still think we should do it, but not at the expense of destroying innocents just to get to a dead planet.
It’s a somewhat sci-fi sounding suggestion, but how’s this for a safety measure - don’t land the nuclear powered rocket. You build it on earth, launch it in to orbit with a chemical booster and no radioactive material on board. Then you can shuttle up the fuel in very heavily sealed containers, so that even if the shuttle blows up on launch or in the air, the chance of contamination is minimal.
This does cause engineering problems (e.g. ‘How do we perform maintenance on the ship’, but I’m sure something could be figured out. Just an added incentive to boost space based industry.)
** kitarak ** - good idea. Considering the size of any spacecraft meant to carry a team of astronauts for atleast several months, multiple launches will probably be neccessary anyway.
Actually, I think that’s a practical idea. The International Space Station could then be used as its construction facility.
If I’m understanding what I’ve read about NTRs, they don’t provice enough thrust for an earth-based launch in any case. You’d have to launch using a chemical rocket and then switch over to the NTR for the long duration burn to get to Mars or anywhere else.
squeegee: I think that depends on the design. I suspect it is possible to design an NTR which provides enough thrust to launch from earth. However, you probably wouldn’t want to design a rocket with enough thrust to lift of earth - you would almost certainly be sacrificing delta-v for thrust, which isn’t a great idea. Not to mention that I’m not wild about the idea of spraying (slightly) radioactive water vapour (or whatever gas it is) into the atmosphere.
jjimm: I think it’s a practical idea too, otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it. 
It just has somewhat sci-fi connotations to it. The only real obstacle I can see is expense - it’s going to cost a significant amount more than some alternatives.
What exactly do you mean about using the ISS as a construction facility? I’m not sure it would be plausible to actually construct the ship in orbit, although maybe it could be used as a base from which to assemble premade modules in orbit.
Kitarak- What you suggest is precisely what will happen. Those who are concerned about a nuclear disaster should there be a launch failure are missing several points IMO.
For one thing, the fuel will almost certainly be shipped up seperately from the reactor, engines and habitats. It will be sent up in as indestructable a container as can be engineered and should an explosion occur will probably simply be salvaged and sent back up again.
Second I will bet you money that the kind of reactor they will send will be along the lines of an advanced pebble bed reactor. The fuel for these reactors is contained in a pool ball sized graphite sphere encased in a very very tough ceramic. This kind of reactor and fuel is relatively safe because it makes a meltdown practically impossible (the spheres prevent enough fissile material from getting close enough to each other to sustain a runaway chain reaction) and has a built in waste containment (the engineered life of the graphite and ceramic exceeds the halflife of the fuel). Pebble bed reactors also have the benefit of being pretty compact and providing a steady small to medium energy output (for a nuclear reactor).
Third, if we are going to seriously attempt any kind of permanent or semi-permanent habitation and exploration in space we HAVE to use nuclear power. Not only does it provide the most practical high velocity thrust using very common reaction mass (Hydrogen or water) but it’s the only thing thats going to be able to consistantly provide us with the kind of juice we’re going to need out there to do anything meaningful. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if any manned mission to Mars includes two or more compact reactors, one for propulsion, one to drop down to supply planetside energy needs and one as a backup.
I really REALLY hope that he puts the money and political clout to make this happen, its the best kind of long term investment and insurance our country can provide for the world.
That’s my take on it too. Of course, I’ve read too many Heinlein junior novels. If I remember correctly, this was done in Farmer in the Sky, where the ship was built and launched from orbit because of the nuclear fuel.
Seriously, there are other arguments for a orbital build and launch. True, you have to boost the materials up there, but once you’ve got them there, you don’t have to worry about the finished craft taking the stresses of an Earth launch, just a Mars launch. We could probably do a fair bit of it using the shuttles and the ISS alone.
I don’t understand these safety concerns. High technology, rocket fuel, plutonium, high temperatures, changing pressures - what could go wrong?
Obviously, if everything is not properly contained, and there is a big explosion, “Houston, we have a problem.”