ISS service extended!

[Wahgineer]

While I do understand how Orion works (they did several ground tests with chemical explosives. They all worked perfectly) and how it is relatively safe, we don't absolutely need it, if at all. All of those nuclear materials could be used to build NERVAs, which would have an infinitely easier time being internationally approved for exemption from the International Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, since they prove to have much lower potential risk (a Nuclear reactor launched to space sounds and is potentially less risky then propelling a storehouse of nuclear weapons to space by blowing up nuclear weapons underneath it). Also, NERVAs would integrate much more easily into existing hardware and infrastructure. While both propulsion systems have similar problems (release of nuclear materials into the environment), the NERVA would have a much smaller impact if it where to fail (beat up nuke reactor on the seabed vs a stack of several hundred to several thousand nuclear bombs going off all at once).

[kiwiak]

It actually woudl be hilarious if north korea, not giving **** about nuclear testing ban started developing oron drive and become major space power

Well someone shoudl make sf book or comic about that.

[crazyewok]

Cheap access to space is never going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years anyway. The energy requirements to get a given mass into orbit are huge, and the engineering requirements to contain that energy within a given mass are always going to be expensive.

Agree unfortunatly.

Do you think that a nuclear drive would be cheap? Fissile material is expensive to process and to handle, and hopefully it will remain that way.

Disagree

The scientists of the project got the cost down by magnitudes due to reducing the fissile material needed to tiny amounts, remember they weren't creating a weapon so there design requirements were different, problem is were they reduced the fissile material the nukes became easier and cheaper to make (and cleaner) hence why alot of the project data is classified.

Thing is the country we dont want having nukes have them or at least in the case of Iran have the capability but no real desire to build them and no other country in the world has the desire to have nuclear weapons. The genies out the bottle so really why hold back mankind's development over it. Plus such a program would only be feasible by USA,Russia and China anyway and maybe the EU .

But political problems are no less real.

I agree. I hate, no detest politics but its there. But there still is a huge difference between a hard scientific barrier and a paper barrier. Both are very much real but one CAN change. If politics didn't we would still be hitting each other over the head with clubs over who cave is who.

It would be impossible to cancel the nuclear test ban treaties, because that would allow Iran, Pakistan, or North Korea to irradiate half of the planet "for peaceful research purposes".

Never said cancel, amend is what IM after with very strict rules. We did nearly have that by the way except russia said no for the sake of being difficult. Plus I also think any such project should be international anyway.

The whole idea of allowing atmospheric nuclear tests to resume would be met by the opposition of 99% of the World's population. Heck, even the wackiest contributors of this forum disagree with you on that!

And I think when it comes to things nuclear people are scared of there own dammed shadow. You wont change me of that opinion. Ok detonating millions kilotons in weapons tests without any attempt to evaluate its impact or reduce it was bad, and would hate to go back to the 50's and 60's were you could detonate 60 megaton monsters at will. BUT there should be exceptions and constant re-evaluation of things every once in a while. a few hundred or thousand Kilotons done in the correct way and for a peaceful purpose I dont see a issue, that my opinion and one I wont budge from.

You can spit and rant as much as you want, you won't change the fact that it's politically unworkable. It's dead Jim. You need to get over it. It's not gonna happen.

O I agree it probably wont happen. But I can wish and dream, though never say never as if things get dire enough on earth attitudes can and likely will change, in what direction who knows?

What I would like to see is another look at the idea, at on paper.

So because launch costs are prohibitive, you suggest building a fleet of $500 billion dollar space ships that run on Deuterium ?

I already addressed this. Plus Deuterium dirt cheap its tritium you may be thinking of.

No way would nuclear bombs turn out that cheap and easy to handle. If they were, some dictator would have blown Humanity to smithereens decades before an Orion spaceship could fly.

Im just saying what the scientists and engineers on the project said (or what they can say). They were pretty much convinced they could get the cost down to $10's of billions or less. These weren't some 3rd rate university drop outs on the project, these were the guys that practicaly wrote the book on nuclear physics and nuclear bombs. Unfortunately alot of there reports are classified so we are just going to go round in circles as theres no concrete proof except what they said in inteviews, but until i see data otherwise I would rather go with what they say rather than what some online guy said, sorry.

[crazyewok]

It actually woudl be hilarious if north korea, not giving **** about nuclear testing ban started developing oron drive and become major space power

Well someone shoudl make sf book or comic about that.

It would make a great comic. Dunno if even a Orion could lift the mass of the Dear Leader but its funny to think.

In reality it wont happen.

What people fail to realise is we are not talking bog standard nukes you find in a armory but a specifuc kind designed for the project. Apprently although cheap to make (due to only needed a fraction of the fissle material) it not something that easy and it would be most likley ealsier for little kim to make a tsar bomb that orion. Really it took the very best and brightest internationaly to design the orion, only people that have a hope I think are the advanced nuclear powers who have similiar nuclear knowlage to the USA and that would be UK, France, Russia and maybe china.

[meve12]

Generate revenue how? What could a private company possibly want from a crewed Mars landing?

World Renown. You'd be the chaps who made the Mars mission possible, that's not something everyone could say.

[Nibb31]

It's not something that can be monetized to recoup the hundreds of billions of dollars that you invested to pull it off though.

[Holo]

Then your a closed minded paranoid fool.

I have no time for people with irrational fears.

There is no harm in haveing a look and seeing if some of the problems cant be ironed out.

Ok if it turns out it deffinatly wont work then fine. But to ban even looking at it because of ones own fears? No diffrent that the irrational fears of the masses in the dark ages.

The fact you would risk nuclear war and mass genoside over a research project is primative and stupid beyond belief. Even at its unsafest a orion would have a 12 in 7 billion chance of killing you, a nuclear war your looking at a 1 in 10 or higher.

He just doesn't want humanity to expand into space because it could threaten his civilisation's goals.

[Nibb31]

Huh? .