ÑóẊîöʼn
8th December 2010, 21:01
Rather than massively derail this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-hatred-anarcho-p1950654/index.html#post1950654), I thought I would continue a conversation in it's own thread.
Carl Sagan has suggested a novel use for nuclear bombs that are just laying around: spaceship propulsion. We could get to Mars in a couple weeks with a nuclear-powered spaceship.
The idea of using nuclear explosives as a form of spacecraft propulsion actually dates back further than that; Project Orion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29) started in 1958 based on an idea proposed by Stanisław Ulam in 1947. A handful of variants were proposed, and the design can still be modified to suit modern sensibilities and knowledge - certainly a nuclear ground launch seems out of the question for the forseeable future. Instead of using fission pulse units for the initial takeoff, it may be possible to use nuclear thermal rocket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Thermal_Rocket) boosters to gain orbit and, if necessary, boost the vehicle above the Van Allen belts before engaging any fission pulse units. Of course, that increases the material and energetic cost of the spacecraft as a whole. But the great thing about the Orion design is that its massive performance envelope enables that kind of flexibility.
Also, getting to Mars within a couple of weeks is nice... if all you want is a latter-day re-enactment of the Apollo saga. While it provided invaluable scientific data, it is hardly the model for a future colonisation and development of the Solar System, with a view to enriching Earth and establishing a permanent and economically self-sufficient human presence off of Earth.
No, the kind of mission that a design such as Orion deserves would involve something along the lines of retrieving a nickel-iron Near Earth Object, preferably the largest one we can find and drag back to Earth orbit, and using the facilities on board the Orion spacecraft (I'm assuming that it's the 8 million ton version) to stripmine the asteroid and process the materials into an orbital infrastructure capable of constructing another spacecraft of similar size to the original.
From then on, our options are opened up enormously. With the original 8-million-ton Orion vehicle plus the dedicated interplanetary spacecraft constructed in the new facilities in Earth orbit, we could make a good shake of colonising Mars for good. Or we could construct a fleet of solar power satellites and have more energy than we could have ever dreamed of if we'd stayed on the surface. Or maybe we could start getting serious about space stations and start work on an O'Neill-style space habitat. Or we could build titanic solar-powered particle accelerators on the Moon designed not for research, but for churning out antimatter, black holes, strangelets and other physics exotica in industrial quantities - if we're feeling ambitious, we could forget the Moon and just do it on Mercury, with it's greater surface area and more powerful insolation.
Given time and the relatively small initial investment of labour and materials, all of those things could be done - and the human species would be immensely enriched, not only materially but culturally as well, with spaceborne communities each providing their own unique perspective on the human (or perhaps by this time, transhuman) condition. With a genuinely accessible Solar System, people may be inspired to establish their own communities independant of the space programme that enabled them to do so - and who knows what they might come up with?
Carl Sagan has suggested a novel use for nuclear bombs that are just laying around: spaceship propulsion. We could get to Mars in a couple weeks with a nuclear-powered spaceship.
The idea of using nuclear explosives as a form of spacecraft propulsion actually dates back further than that; Project Orion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29) started in 1958 based on an idea proposed by Stanisław Ulam in 1947. A handful of variants were proposed, and the design can still be modified to suit modern sensibilities and knowledge - certainly a nuclear ground launch seems out of the question for the forseeable future. Instead of using fission pulse units for the initial takeoff, it may be possible to use nuclear thermal rocket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Thermal_Rocket) boosters to gain orbit and, if necessary, boost the vehicle above the Van Allen belts before engaging any fission pulse units. Of course, that increases the material and energetic cost of the spacecraft as a whole. But the great thing about the Orion design is that its massive performance envelope enables that kind of flexibility.
Also, getting to Mars within a couple of weeks is nice... if all you want is a latter-day re-enactment of the Apollo saga. While it provided invaluable scientific data, it is hardly the model for a future colonisation and development of the Solar System, with a view to enriching Earth and establishing a permanent and economically self-sufficient human presence off of Earth.
No, the kind of mission that a design such as Orion deserves would involve something along the lines of retrieving a nickel-iron Near Earth Object, preferably the largest one we can find and drag back to Earth orbit, and using the facilities on board the Orion spacecraft (I'm assuming that it's the 8 million ton version) to stripmine the asteroid and process the materials into an orbital infrastructure capable of constructing another spacecraft of similar size to the original.
From then on, our options are opened up enormously. With the original 8-million-ton Orion vehicle plus the dedicated interplanetary spacecraft constructed in the new facilities in Earth orbit, we could make a good shake of colonising Mars for good. Or we could construct a fleet of solar power satellites and have more energy than we could have ever dreamed of if we'd stayed on the surface. Or maybe we could start getting serious about space stations and start work on an O'Neill-style space habitat. Or we could build titanic solar-powered particle accelerators on the Moon designed not for research, but for churning out antimatter, black holes, strangelets and other physics exotica in industrial quantities - if we're feeling ambitious, we could forget the Moon and just do it on Mercury, with it's greater surface area and more powerful insolation.
Given time and the relatively small initial investment of labour and materials, all of those things could be done - and the human species would be immensely enriched, not only materially but culturally as well, with spaceborne communities each providing their own unique perspective on the human (or perhaps by this time, transhuman) condition. With a genuinely accessible Solar System, people may be inspired to establish their own communities independant of the space programme that enabled them to do so - and who knows what they might come up with?