Nuclear Lightbulbs and other Nuclear drives Analyzed..

[Spacescifi]

 

This video below is informative, as it a test drive of a nuclear lightbulb.

 

What I learned:

 

1. Thrust is still kinda weak. The drive needed boosters to get to orbit. In space no less. This is no SSTO unless your cargo load is very, very, light.

2. It does not like long burns, as the heat load goes up so high that you need to radiate the heat away somehow.

3. The main positive is that it does not burn through it's propellant/fuel quickly, but considering the fact that constant acceleratiom at fast speeds (1g) will likely overheat the engine sooner ir later, you would have to coast plenty of times inbetween anyway. Increasing travel time.

I know KSP is not totally realistic, but I tend to think this assessment is more correct than many of the more rosy predictions of the nuclear lightbulb.

Basically it seems like an improvement over the NTR, but at the price of not being able to tolerate long constant burns.

He did mention that with sufficient radiators even long burns would be possible, but such inertial mass tends to cut into propellant even more during retroburns, offsetting the speed advantage by requiring more propellant in the long run.

 

It's funny realky from a worldbuilding fictional perspective. I was half tempted to write a fictional alien race who could use open cycle NTR abd orion pusher plates without any radiation effects on their health. Yet because I did not want to get into the research of that... I did'nt. Still... it would be nice if that stuff did'nt kill us. Or if we could make a clean, fallout free orion.

 

 

[Guest]

This is Porkjet's lightbulb, and it isn't really a good representation of a nuclear lightbulb at all. The problem is that KSP just doesn't model nuclear reactors. A real lightbulb would not generate "waste heat", because of open-cycle cooling (that is, you dump all the heat into the exhaust). Heat is there for game balance, not because the real thing has the same problems. Liquid fuel is not hydrogen, and this whole device is pretty much purely imaginary modeled to look like one of the lightbulb concepts. 

This is why KSP2 needs to be more realistic with its nuclear technology. People do tests like that and assume it matches reality. It doesn't. KSP's engine "model" breaks down completely once you go past simple rocket engines. Even the NERVA behaves completely wrong without a mod.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Guest

[Concodroid]

50 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

This is Porkjet's lightbulb, and it isn't really a good representation of a nuclear lightbulb at all. The problem is that KSP just doesn't model nuclear reactors. A real lightbulb would not generate "waste heat", because of open-cycle cooling (that is, you dump all the heat into the exhaust). Heat is there for game balance, not because the real thing has the same problems. Liquid fuel is not hydrogen, and this whole device is pretty much purely imaginary modeled to look like one of the lightbulb concepts. 

This is why KSP2 needs to be more realistic with its nuclear technology. People do tests like that and assume it matches reality. It doesn't. KSP's engine "model" breaks down completely once you go past simple rocket engines. Even the NERVA behaves completely wrong without a mod.

Quite correct, well said!

 

Although we do have to give the KSP devs a break, I mean, it is a game, after all, not a NASA super-high-budget simulator requiring 50 petaFLOPS!

 

In all seriousness, If we wanted an accurate simulation, first we'd need KJR and FAR, I think, to get at least atmospheric simulations correct. Then we'd need n-body physics, and a whole host of other features that some people want in KSP 2, and some people don't.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, Concodroid said:

NASA super-high-budget simulator requiring 50 petaFLOPS!

How many mods have they installed???

Now I understand how they make their spaceflight animations...

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

5 hours ago, Concodroid said:

I mean, it is a game, after all, not a NASA super-high-budget simulator requiring 50 petaFLOPS!

I dunno, the guys at Sarov once installed a bitcoin miner in a 1-petaflop nuclear weapon design mainframe, maybe you should ask them to run your modded KSP install.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

maybe you should ask them to run your modded KSP install.

Five-six years later...

[Concodroid]

10 hours ago, DDE said:

I dunno, the guys at Sarov once installed a bitcoin miner in a 1-petaflop nuclear weapon design mainframe, maybe you should ask them to run your modded KSP install.

lol we need many, many more mods to get actual physics. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Concodroid