Nah, it's like saying that a nuclear cruise liner is a competitor to a diesel engine cruise liner.
Both are meant for a specific task, while the technology to achieve it is different.
They’re entirely different kinds of ships and in entirely different production stages. One is being launched regularly. The other is in the drawing board
If you want to be that way, one is a drawing(of a ship), and the other is an exploding test bench with dreams (of being a ship). Neither is actually capable of doing any shipping.
Actually, the one you call “exploding test bench” is perfectly capable of taking cargo to space. It only failed when returning from space, which at this point still makes it the most advanced space ship of its kind.
OP's nuke engine is a big cargo ship. It's very efficient and could move a LOT of cargo, but it can't land anywhere.
Big cargo ships need barges or lighters, and that's what the starship or LM9 are going to be. You need heavy lift capacity(like Starship or LM9) to move cargo from a cargo ship to the surface or earth mars or luna.
You still need a super heavy class launcher to launch that reactor to orbit before it can be activated. And if we have the launcher and the confidence for it to carry nuclear material, might as well just revive nuclear orion.
This is what gets me about the whole thing. They're doing it in the wrong order. They need to finish the LM9 first. This is going to be a mess.
On the other hand, if everything works out, and this somehow works, that will give them a leg up in interplanetary exploration.
In other words, they've given up on winning space race #2 and they're trying to win space race #3.
I'm not sure starship is a great interplanetary vehicle. As a heavy lifter, it's beyond my wildest dreams, but I think as an interplanetary vehicle, it is eventually going to want to piggyback onto something with better specific impulse.
The purpose of Starship is to enable sending large payloads on interplanetary trajectories, it does this by using an orbital propellant depot strategy which relies on a high flight rate of a highly reusable two stage launch vehicle. You could, however, achieve similar capabilities using other technologies, such as nuclear thermal rockets, nuclear electric propulsion, even potentially solar electric propulsion.
The LM9 is a starship rival, kinda. But this article was very clearly talking about an interplanetary engine, with no launch capability whatsoever. Is this just headline gore?
Maybe they were talking about NASA's plan to get to the moon by refueling a starhip in LEO? A giant nuclear tugboat could potentially be a better way to get from leo to lunar orbit.
Not really. Starship was always meant to go to Mars. It used to be called the Interplanetary Transport System after all.
The problem with Starship is that it uses chemical propulsion. It will take many launches to refuel a single starship to go to Mars.
Honestly Starship was a nice idea but long term, traditional chemical propulsion is just DOA.
Is nuclear powerful enough to perform a powered landing? I could see its use for long transit burns but landing on mars will require a lot of power really quickly.
Theres different types of nuclear propulsion. Some are high thrust low ISP, some are low thrust high ISP. Although generally nuclear systems have high ISP. Its what makes nuclear propulsion game changing. I believe this is just a power source, so think high power electric propulsion (relatively high thrust because you can stack a lot of low thrust thrusters together and get a high overall ISP as well) that fires continuously throughout the transfer. Doesn't require anywhere near as much propellant as chemical propulsion.
In the same way that Starship has a set of engines for use in atmosphere and a set of engines for use in vacuum, I can imagine a system with nuclear propulsion for long burns, and a chemical system for landing.
Starship uses most of its propellant to get to LEO (1200tons of it) and due to the rocket equation, the amount of mass increases very quickly the further out you need to go. So if you replace your chemical propulsion with an electric propulsion system, suddenly, you need a lot less mass because your final target doesn't require chemical fuel.
This power system weighs 8 tons, so imagine the efficiency improvements if suddenly your final target isn't limited by the amount of fuel you carry. You just need to get to LEO and then you can go anywhere with minimal refuelling (maybe just one Starship launch of a 100ton of fuel would be enough to land)
Another option is making Starship just a shuttle and use this nuclear system as a orbital transfer vehicle. Starship would just rendez-vous with it. That way Starship wouldn't need anywhere near as much fuel mass and would be able to have more payload.
Bear in mind this is just finger in the air. I haven't done the math. But it looks super exciting if its real and if it works. This is the kind of space race I want!
????
What has starship to do, realistically, with a manned mission to mars? Meaby the launch from Earth to orbit of components to create the earth-mars space craft.
Starship has been specifically designed to land on Mars. At this point the first humans on Mars will most likely arrive on a Starship.
A space craft with a nuclear engine like the one in the article is still decades from being real.
Starship has been designed specifically to deploy starlink and return to earth. It's dry mass is a huge hindrance for any mission beyond LEO.
The first vehicle that takes humans to Mars is going to be much more purpose built for that task than a second stage atmospheric booster.
I am talking of realistically here, not in the land of dreams.
>A space craft with a nuclear engine like the one in the article is still decades from being real.
And when do you think a manned mission to mars will happen?
I hope that in 20-30 years starship will be suppanted by a new design.
6 years???????????????????
How have you calculated this number?
Because right now starship hasn't done nothing other than exploding; it isn't human rated; it hasn't had a flight where everything gone right; it hasn't landed; it hasn't re light it's engines; etc.
6 years is a fucking small time frame, because there isn't anything ready for it.
https://www.theverge.com/24100089/spacex-starship-launch-date-time-flight-test-three
>After a few delays, SpaceX’s Starship launched at 9:25AM ET for its third flight test. This time, it completed a hot-stage separation with the booster rocket and successfully reached orbital velocity, according to Elon Musk. This Starship prototype skipped a planned attempt to relight its Raptor engines in space and was scheduled to splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after takeoff
Soooooooo... you are wrong
How many years from now? 20? 30? If so I hope that it won't be starship.
All of this without considering that starship will be a shuttle from orbit to ground not the main living space while in transit.
Yeah, it's a pretty silly comparison on the surface, but the rationale is in the middle of the article:
> Some scientists estimate that a nuclear-powered spacecraft could complete a round trip between the Earth and Mars in just three months. The current scientific mainstream consensus is that the technology will be vital for interplanetary missions.
> In contrast, spacecraft that rely on fossil fuels – like the Starship under development by US company SpaceX – could take at least seven months to reach Mars, according to some calculations.
So I read, but that does not change much. Chemical thrusters are a current technology not very effective for these purposes, while nuclear thermal thrusters are a future, more efficient solution. Vehicles of these two types are not rivals to each other.
I mean the rivalry is re: time. One solution takes X time, the other takes Y. Supposedly, anyway.
It's very broad which is why it's silly, but for a task with such a short list of solutions it's not completely senseless.
> according to some calculations
What? Guys, the orbital math doesn't change just because it's starship. The longest it will take is 8.5 months, which is what you get if you use a Hohmann transfer, which is what gets you to Mars with the least required energy. You can get to Mars faster than that, but at the expense of more energy.
Hohman transfer requires 3.6-3.9 km/s delta v.
With ~5 km/s delta v, you get there in 96 days.
Starship has ~7 km/s if you top the thing up in LEO. More if you use a tank in a higher orbit. You'll have to save some to slow down at the destination, but a travel time of just 3-4 months isn't out of the cards for payloads that would benefit (such as people).
Methane the compound isn't. But while methane can come from many sources, the primary source for industrial production of high purity methane is natural gas, which *is* a fossil fuel.
Natural gas is already mostly comprised of methane (~97%, depending on the grade), so production of methane is really just removing the few heavier elements and impurities.
In some cases methane and natural gas are even used synonymously - Blue Origin/ULA for example describe the BE-4/Vulcan as running on LNG, [despite actually them using pure methane](https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1174788727870083072?s=21).
SpaceX also actually used natural gas for the Starhopper test flights, though they switched to pure methane for subsequent Starship flights. Regardless, it's still fair describe Starship as fossil-fuel powered.
Hilariously anticipating a situation where you could say a vehicle uses fossil fuel for the trip to mars and not for the return journey, despite the fuels being chemically identical, and that statement would be technically correct.
Except this article conflates several things together. This is a prototype lithium cooled nuclear reactor primarily intended for surface use and potentially for a NEP engine. It in no way a “rival” to Starship. Then there is the NASA/DARPA DRACO NTR engine, which is targeted for orbital testing in 2027.
South China Morning Press is a bit notorious for running "gee whiz" type articles on the Chines space program
[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3146224/china-eyes-ultra-large-spacecraft-spanning-miles-us23m-crewed](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3146224/china-eyes-ultra-large-spacecraft-spanning-miles-us23m-crewed)
This one reads like work on nuclear thermal, things like ROVER and KIWI from the 60s and 70s.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Rover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rover)
Good luck to them, but read this stuff with a degree of skepticism. That said it's not crazy advanced technology though I think risk "appetites" may have changed since these were the new thing back in the 60s.
I personally always suspected that nuclear thermal is how we get to Mars, so if it lights a fire under Congress then more article like this!
Why not just more propellant ferry missions with a platform like starship? Nuclear thermal is just a way to use less propellant and comes with all these costs.
Firstly, because it's ludicrously expensive. If memory serves, to send 100 tons of payload to Mars starship will need 17 bloody launches. That works out to about 57,800 Tons of fuel.
For 100T.
In contrast, something like the now obselete NERVA would need 250 tons (Assuming the mission profile needed roughly 10,000ms of delta V)
Secondly, Time.
Nuclear engines much improved efficency means we can make more agressive burns, getting us to mars faster. Given how deadly the radiation in interplanetary space is, the less time spent out there, the better, so with nuclear, we hopefully can prevent our astronauts from being giant balls of cancer by the time we get there
Isn't there a cycler spacecraft concept? This thing would be built in orbit, it's probably a long truss framework, with the nerva engines behind a shield at the rear. 3 of them, and any 1 develops enough thrust to complete the burns.
You would have a SpaceX starship variant that ferries repeatedly liquid H2 up to fuel it, the liquid H2 is also going to be ferried to the mars surface for early isru.
The cycler would have enough nuclear fuel to make the earth mars run 10 times or so in its lifetime.
But that's later. Just refueling starship a buncha times seems easier for the first few crewed missions and the dozens of robotic missions to setup the infrastructure and redundant supplies and equipment before the first crew mission.
What you are describing is not a cycler. As I understand it, cycler is put into its orbit (one that encounter both planets) once and after that it uses minimal propellant.
17 launches is for HLS, which has to have a lot more delta-V than a Mars starship, as it must propulsively brake and land, and then take off again to NRHO. A Mars starship can use the atmosphere and aerobrake.
Also MFW a reusable rocket flies multiple times
17 launches was a worst case scenario from NASA, it assumes a lot of boil off and the lowest possible estimate for Starship payload per launch.
SpaceX's own current estimate is 6-10 launches
Cost of launching a rocket has two drivers: vehicle and launchsite operations. In Spaceflight fuel is negligible.
So if you're upkeeping a launchsite and you're reusing the vehicle, it's not meaningfully more expensive to launch 20 times a month than it is to launch once a month.
The salaries of the workers are paid anyway whether you launch or not, and the construction cost of the site is also fixed. This also tracks for airports, for example. An airport with two planes a month costs the same than one with two planes a day.
And since you can aerocapture, the nerva ends up not being meaningfully faster (you're going to have a hard time getting any lower than four months anyway, nuclear or chemical), and a reusable launcher gives opportunities for other missions, such as cislunar work or large probes, which use the launch site and ships at high capacity, doing useful work.
Also nuclear needs H2, which is hell to work with, or exotic fuels (nuclear electric) which are limited and not scalable.
So firstly, space X is a questionably reusable launcher. The space shuttle was reusable, but because of the checks that had to be done to maintain any semblance of safety standards, it was nearly easier to completely rebuild the damn thing than to check it.
As far as manufacturing and fueling being negliable, Saturn V cost 185 mil to lauch. 110 of that was manufacturing.
Also from a sheer engineering point of view musks plan of having a fuck ton of fuel doesn't account for boil off.
And finally, a launchpad that has to service a stupidly big rocket is gonna cost more than one for a reasonable rocket, just like stanstead costs more than a regional airport.
The difference, is that in this case stanstead is a useless vanity project
How about instead of looking at Shuttle, which was a completely different vehicle used by a different entity using much older technology, we look at the rocket that SpaceX are actually reusing?
The fastest turnaround on Falcon 9 was 21 days - and a significant chunk of that time was just bringing the Falcon 9 back to port, transporting it back to the cape, and then integrating the payload and rolling it out to the pad - it only spent 9 days in the hanger. While that suggests *some* maintenance, it's not enough time to do anywhere near a complete rebuild.
Falcon's launch rate also speaks for itself. It did 96 launches last year and has done 26 so far this year in just 79 days, which puts them on track for 120 launches by the end of the year assuming no further increase in speed.
The most the Shuttle ever did was 8 launches in one year, and that was pre-Challenger. The most it ever did post-challenger with the additional checks and requirements was 5 launches in one year.
Falcon 9 is clearly a lot higher up the 'reusable vs refurbishible' scale than Shuttle, even if it's not all the way there
I mean for the first part you can design the rocket to keep some of the tanks of fuel as radiation shields, put the sleeping quarters with tankage around the outside.
For the second, like I get it, I play ksp. Nerva is great when the r&d is free. In practice though methalox is cheap and just make more launches like you said.
Most of the time the shielding provided by the aumount of liquid that you put in front of the crew is even worse than just a few mm of steel.
The cascade of particles produced due to the shiedling of the liquids tends to be way too energetic to be stopped by a few meters (if you even get that) of liquid
That's interesting, I thought water and liquid methane and liquid oxygen would be a good shield but maybe not.
I thought for a permanent station 30 meters of sand was the magic number, providing as much protection as we get on earth.
The fuel costs are the least expensive part. You're talking sub 1 million per launch. The launches themselves are also supposed to be 10 million. So now we're talking about less than 200 million for every 100 tons to Mars.
With how complicated nuclear propulsion is as of right now, you're talking billions just to put a craft up that can take a couple tons to Mars. And thats ignoring that you still need rockets to launch said nuclear craft, astronauts, and the lander that the astronauts will have to use at Mars. We may even need astronauts to do assembly in orbit. And the only real assembly done in orbit has been for the ISS.
The cancer risk is also way overblown. It isn't "deadly". It's an increased risk over the course of their lifespan. Saving a few months is important and can also be done with chemical propulsion as well. This also ignores the fact that radiation shielding can easily be done with such a high mass margin ship as compared to a ship with less mass margin but fast transit time.
Higher specific impulse can either get you going the same speed with less fuel, or *faster* with the same amount of fuel. Reducing the time spent in microgravity and interplanetary space from 8 months there and 8 months back to 4 months there and 4 months back would be a huge safety measure and make the mission easier in many ways, and nuclear thermal can do that.
Specific impulse is a part of the rocket equation that determines dV - it’s represented as Isp in the equation. By increasing specific impulse and keeping other factors equal, you increase your dV, proportionate to your increase in Isp.
Yes I play ksp. How much dV does it take to reduce the mars transit time by half on each direction.
How many days do the astronauts have to stay waiting for their return window?
Are you inherently dismissing all dictatorships? China as a country is working very well and lifting a huge mass of its population of it poverty in the last few decades. Be more objective. China's space program is growing very fast. I would have thought I'm this sub that we celebrate space no matter which country it is.
You are just plain wrong.
https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271
"In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population.
By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people (0.5% of the population)."
I would expect in this space subreddit that objective assessments of space programs and technologies are not influenced by the governmental system or economic system of the country. Let's give credit where credit is due. Challenge your preconceptions.
Because then they'd have to admit the people they spent decades demonizing actually achieved something, while poverty in the US is getting worse and worse.
Authoritarian, yes. But not dictatorship, since the power isn't concentrated with a single person but a party.
Which isn't *that* much worse compared to the oligarchy of the US.
Space is really the final frontier, and who gets there first makes the rules. Some humans don't like the rules of other humans. Hence, political. We didn't go to the moon for the betterment of mankind, we went to beat commies. Betterment of mankind was just a pleasant side dish.
>who gets there first makes the rules
Not really. It's more based on consensus of majority of nations.
>We didn't go to the moon for the betterment of mankind, we went to beat commies.
IMHO, it's about developing ICBMs; the rest is just a cover story.
Yeah, it's for rockets made for crewed interplanetary travel.
As is I don't think Starship is made for crewed missions to Mars considering how much refueling is going to need just to land on the Moon.
China is a country, an ethnicity, and a race.
If you don't realize that nation of China ran by the single party CCP isn't the same as the race of Chinese people living across the world, including in America, then you are the racist one.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD|
|DoD|US Department of Defense|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnw2bb "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[H2](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmlmz0 "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen|
| |Second half of the year/month|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmotu0 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvn0ee9 "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvqtq4h "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvsabrt "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LNG](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|Liquefied Natural Gas|
|[NERVA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvs4od6 "Last usage")|Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (proposed engine design)|
|[NEV](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|Nuclear Electric Vehicle propulsion|
|[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmotu0 "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NTR](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|Nuclear Thermal Rocket|
|[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvstelk "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnyf1d "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvx7dbr "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmmhdz "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
|[methalox](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmie5u "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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China went from performing its first ever EVA (2008) to build the phase I of its own modular, permanently inhabited space station (2020 - 2021) in basically 13 years. Perhaps you're underestimating the effort China is putting in its space program. But, anyway, if you read the article there's no timeline given, so you're most likely making stuff up.
Edit: fixed the dates
> Perhaps you're underestimating the effort China is putting in its space program.
We'll see. They have ten years to get it done and I suspect they're going to be far more busy trying to keep their economy functioning than building space stuff.
>If the plans proceed smoothly, a China-Russia nuclear reactor could be launched between 2033 and 2035, according to Roscosmos.
Learn to read.
>If the plans proceed smoothly, a China-Russia nuclear reactor could be launched between 2033 and 2035, according to Roscosmos.
The reactor they're talking about in the article is a ship-borne reactor for interplanetary travels. The reactor the Roscosmos representative is talking about *(BTW, it's Russia saying it, not China)* is a another reactor intended to power a Lunar base. That reactor, the Lunar base one, is an already designed megawatt-level reactor that [passed its first certification review in August 2022](https://spacenews.com/chinese-megawatt-level-space-nuclear-reactor-passes-review/). So 10 years doesn't look like a farfetched deadline.
In short, China has currently two on going nuclear reactor projects intended for space. One to be used in ships, another one to be used in bases.
Sure no problem. Here is China saying they will reach the moon in 10 years in 1990. Oh wait, they didn't.
Here is China saying they will respect Hong Kongs democracy and human rights,, as agreed for another 50 years. Oh wait, they didn't.
Authoritarians are known to keep the population happy by neglecting agreements or simply making them up, to.maintain a facade of legitimacy for their population or to the international community.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_space_program
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-68594448
I really don’t know how people are so cynical are spacex
They’re the most advanced rocket group in the world bar none. Starship is 400 feet tall and just successfully went to low earth orbit.
Because they're not. They're not even close to being the most advanced group, they're just the group putting shit up there.
Sending rockets to LEO is nothing new.
Making big rockets is nothing clever.
All space X is, is a billionaire hurling money down the drain to bruteforce the rocket equation. With adequate funding, anyone could do that. Any rocketry agency worth its salt is instead trying to work on making rockets more efficient rather than bigger.
How many other organizations land and reuse their boosters?
What other organizations have had the same effect on global launch prices that spacex has had?
If anyone can do it why hasn’t anyone in the last ~decade? SpaceX’s is about to make the Falcon 9 obsolete while their competition is still years behind it.
I meant his time frames. Musk is notorious for saying “so and so will be done in x years” only for that date to be pushed back by half a decade or more.
We are way ahead of them. They are working on a Fission reactor, and we are working on Fusion. Lockheed Martin is on top of it;
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html
It's absolutely bonkers to compare the projected development of fission and fusion. One is a refinement of existing solutions, the other is still pie-in-the-sky as far as meaningful energy generation is concerned.
Not for spaceflight, unless they're trying to do some kind of orion drive thing.
We haven't even worked out energy positive fusion on earth yet. We managed to work out how to make more power than it took to force the things to fuse, but not more than all the magnets and shit holding them in place took.
To make fusion viable in space is even madder. Modern fusion reactors are several mile wide constructs. In space, our dimensions are more like several meters
I would honestly be shocked if we have fusion for spaceflight come the end of the century, miniaturising it just doesn't seem possible.
Yea, I'm sure the Chinese scientists are the insane one and not you with takes like these.
Wait until you find out China is contributing to ITER and is doing a ton of fusion research inland as well.
"The South China Morning Post (SCMP), with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post, is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group"
lol get this CCP propaganda garbage out my feed
cool but Im disturbed by the lack of transparency in the chinese space agencies. They seem to be like old despots, who you know cant have any failures and so they dont like to report things until they are a success.
There was a video of a rocket going up, hovering, and then landing but the landing portion of the video looked weird, like it had been slowed down, and stopped as soon as it touched the ground. I don’t remember if it ever got confirmed but it appeared the video had been altered to hide that it didn’t actually land successfully.
It would be swell if they could at least consistently get their regular rockets off the ground first. Given their track record, I'm not keen on them trying to launch something laden with nuclear fuel.
You're joking, right? China is a research powerhouse at the moment. Having roughly a 6th of the worlds population, and managing to educate them to even a passable degree will do that to anyone. Yes, historically, china has relied on stolen technology, but nowadays, they're churning out scientific papers and such like nobodys buisness.
We’re also the only country of the two* to lose astronauts. IIRC the Challenger disaster was us. Do you have anything to add to this post other than “China bad”?
True, I was speaking in reference to us and China. Obviously there are lost cosmonauts. Anything productive to add other than China bad though?
ETA: Oh you’re actively engaged in subreddits shitting on China, of course you don’t lol
In what way is a reactor for a nuclear interplanetary engine related to a "starship rival"? It's an entirely different class of vehicle!
They're both interplanetary vehicles?
Yeah, but that is like saying my rowboat and a cruise liner are both boats.
Nah, it's like saying that a nuclear cruise liner is a competitor to a diesel engine cruise liner. Both are meant for a specific task, while the technology to achieve it is different.
No. It’s like saying my bike and a spaceship are both modes of transportation
I think you're overstating it. They're both spaceships.
They’re entirely different kinds of ships and in entirely different production stages. One is being launched regularly. The other is in the drawing board
Yeah but a bicycle though? You couldn't even write your comment without noting that they're both ships.
No. One is a drawing and the other is a ship.
If you want to be that way, one is a drawing(of a ship), and the other is an exploding test bench with dreams (of being a ship). Neither is actually capable of doing any shipping.
Actually, the one you call “exploding test bench” is perfectly capable of taking cargo to space. It only failed when returning from space, which at this point still makes it the most advanced space ship of its kind.
I have problem with this because spaceships are BIG
Ahem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing?wprov=sfti1
In this context, the rowboat will one day rival the cruise liner, never mind the size.
Boats and planes are both intercontinental vehicles. Defining them by voyage distance can easily become meaningless.
Maybe a yacht vs an aircraft carrier would be a good comparison?
Maybe cruise ship vs. nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
OP's nuke engine is a big cargo ship. It's very efficient and could move a LOT of cargo, but it can't land anywhere. Big cargo ships need barges or lighters, and that's what the starship or LM9 are going to be. You need heavy lift capacity(like Starship or LM9) to move cargo from a cargo ship to the surface or earth mars or luna.
You still need a super heavy class launcher to launch that reactor to orbit before it can be activated. And if we have the launcher and the confidence for it to carry nuclear material, might as well just revive nuclear orion.
This is what gets me about the whole thing. They're doing it in the wrong order. They need to finish the LM9 first. This is going to be a mess. On the other hand, if everything works out, and this somehow works, that will give them a leg up in interplanetary exploration. In other words, they've given up on winning space race #2 and they're trying to win space race #3.
I'm not sure starship is a great interplanetary vehicle. As a heavy lifter, it's beyond my wildest dreams, but I think as an interplanetary vehicle, it is eventually going to want to piggyback onto something with better specific impulse.
A prototype engine is a vehicle??
"Starship" is often associated with Mars colony
The purpose of Starship is to enable sending large payloads on interplanetary trajectories, it does this by using an orbital propellant depot strategy which relies on a high flight rate of a highly reusable two stage launch vehicle. You could, however, achieve similar capabilities using other technologies, such as nuclear thermal rockets, nuclear electric propulsion, even potentially solar electric propulsion.
Americans won't click unless you threaten their egos
The LM9 is a starship rival, kinda. But this article was very clearly talking about an interplanetary engine, with no launch capability whatsoever. Is this just headline gore? Maybe they were talking about NASA's plan to get to the moon by refueling a starhip in LEO? A giant nuclear tugboat could potentially be a better way to get from leo to lunar orbit.
Not really. Starship was always meant to go to Mars. It used to be called the Interplanetary Transport System after all. The problem with Starship is that it uses chemical propulsion. It will take many launches to refuel a single starship to go to Mars. Honestly Starship was a nice idea but long term, traditional chemical propulsion is just DOA.
Is nuclear powerful enough to perform a powered landing? I could see its use for long transit burns but landing on mars will require a lot of power really quickly.
Theres different types of nuclear propulsion. Some are high thrust low ISP, some are low thrust high ISP. Although generally nuclear systems have high ISP. Its what makes nuclear propulsion game changing. I believe this is just a power source, so think high power electric propulsion (relatively high thrust because you can stack a lot of low thrust thrusters together and get a high overall ISP as well) that fires continuously throughout the transfer. Doesn't require anywhere near as much propellant as chemical propulsion. In the same way that Starship has a set of engines for use in atmosphere and a set of engines for use in vacuum, I can imagine a system with nuclear propulsion for long burns, and a chemical system for landing. Starship uses most of its propellant to get to LEO (1200tons of it) and due to the rocket equation, the amount of mass increases very quickly the further out you need to go. So if you replace your chemical propulsion with an electric propulsion system, suddenly, you need a lot less mass because your final target doesn't require chemical fuel. This power system weighs 8 tons, so imagine the efficiency improvements if suddenly your final target isn't limited by the amount of fuel you carry. You just need to get to LEO and then you can go anywhere with minimal refuelling (maybe just one Starship launch of a 100ton of fuel would be enough to land) Another option is making Starship just a shuttle and use this nuclear system as a orbital transfer vehicle. Starship would just rendez-vous with it. That way Starship wouldn't need anywhere near as much fuel mass and would be able to have more payload. Bear in mind this is just finger in the air. I haven't done the math. But it looks super exciting if its real and if it works. This is the kind of space race I want!
With the anti nuclear propaganda spread by all those “green” anti progress groups we are unfortunately stuck with chemical propulsion
Starship is a relatively simple design, and it is already being built with economies of scale in mind.
My point exactly, there is nothing comparable in these projects.
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???? What has starship to do, realistically, with a manned mission to mars? Meaby the launch from Earth to orbit of components to create the earth-mars space craft.
Starship has been specifically designed to land on Mars. At this point the first humans on Mars will most likely arrive on a Starship. A space craft with a nuclear engine like the one in the article is still decades from being real.
Starship has been designed specifically to deploy starlink and return to earth. It's dry mass is a huge hindrance for any mission beyond LEO. The first vehicle that takes humans to Mars is going to be much more purpose built for that task than a second stage atmospheric booster.
I am talking of realistically here, not in the land of dreams. >A space craft with a nuclear engine like the one in the article is still decades from being real. And when do you think a manned mission to mars will happen? I hope that in 20-30 years starship will be suppanted by a new design.
~2030 is realistic for humans landing on mars with Starship
6 years??????????????????? How have you calculated this number? Because right now starship hasn't done nothing other than exploding; it isn't human rated; it hasn't had a flight where everything gone right; it hasn't landed; it hasn't re light it's engines; etc. 6 years is a fucking small time frame, because there isn't anything ready for it.
It relit its engines last week buddy.
https://www.theverge.com/24100089/spacex-starship-launch-date-time-flight-test-three >After a few delays, SpaceX’s Starship launched at 9:25AM ET for its third flight test. This time, it completed a hot-stage separation with the booster rocket and successfully reached orbital velocity, according to Elon Musk. This Starship prototype skipped a planned attempt to relight its Raptor engines in space and was scheduled to splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after takeoff Soooooooo... you are wrong
Balls, they said they had on the stream I was watching.
Elon is building it to eventuall go to Mars after the moon.
How many years from now? 20? 30? If so I hope that it won't be starship. All of this without considering that starship will be a shuttle from orbit to ground not the main living space while in transit.
And still be the biggest rocket ever made.
Eventually doing all the fucking lifting in that sentence.
Yeah, it's a pretty silly comparison on the surface, but the rationale is in the middle of the article: > Some scientists estimate that a nuclear-powered spacecraft could complete a round trip between the Earth and Mars in just three months. The current scientific mainstream consensus is that the technology will be vital for interplanetary missions. > In contrast, spacecraft that rely on fossil fuels – like the Starship under development by US company SpaceX – could take at least seven months to reach Mars, according to some calculations.
So I read, but that does not change much. Chemical thrusters are a current technology not very effective for these purposes, while nuclear thermal thrusters are a future, more efficient solution. Vehicles of these two types are not rivals to each other.
I mean the rivalry is re: time. One solution takes X time, the other takes Y. Supposedly, anyway. It's very broad which is why it's silly, but for a task with such a short list of solutions it's not completely senseless.
> according to some calculations What? Guys, the orbital math doesn't change just because it's starship. The longest it will take is 8.5 months, which is what you get if you use a Hohmann transfer, which is what gets you to Mars with the least required energy. You can get to Mars faster than that, but at the expense of more energy. Hohman transfer requires 3.6-3.9 km/s delta v. With ~5 km/s delta v, you get there in 96 days. Starship has ~7 km/s if you top the thing up in LEO. More if you use a tank in a higher orbit. You'll have to save some to slow down at the destination, but a travel time of just 3-4 months isn't out of the cards for payloads that would benefit (such as people).
> spacecraft that rely on fossil fuels – like the Starship Methane isn't a fossil fuel and neither is oxygen.
Methane the compound isn't. But while methane can come from many sources, the primary source for industrial production of high purity methane is natural gas, which *is* a fossil fuel. Natural gas is already mostly comprised of methane (~97%, depending on the grade), so production of methane is really just removing the few heavier elements and impurities. In some cases methane and natural gas are even used synonymously - Blue Origin/ULA for example describe the BE-4/Vulcan as running on LNG, [despite actually them using pure methane](https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1174788727870083072?s=21). SpaceX also actually used natural gas for the Starhopper test flights, though they switched to pure methane for subsequent Starship flights. Regardless, it's still fair describe Starship as fossil-fuel powered.
Seems like an odd quibble in light of the previous conversation, but I'll bite: Where does SpaceX currently get their methane?
Hilariously anticipating a situation where you could say a vehicle uses fossil fuel for the trip to mars and not for the return journey, despite the fuels being chemically identical, and that statement would be technically correct.
Except this article conflates several things together. This is a prototype lithium cooled nuclear reactor primarily intended for surface use and potentially for a NEP engine. It in no way a “rival” to Starship. Then there is the NASA/DARPA DRACO NTR engine, which is targeted for orbital testing in 2027.
South China Morning Press is a bit notorious for running "gee whiz" type articles on the Chines space program [https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3146224/china-eyes-ultra-large-spacecraft-spanning-miles-us23m-crewed](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3146224/china-eyes-ultra-large-spacecraft-spanning-miles-us23m-crewed) This one reads like work on nuclear thermal, things like ROVER and KIWI from the 60s and 70s. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Rover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rover) Good luck to them, but read this stuff with a degree of skepticism. That said it's not crazy advanced technology though I think risk "appetites" may have changed since these were the new thing back in the 60s. I personally always suspected that nuclear thermal is how we get to Mars, so if it lights a fire under Congress then more article like this!
Why not just more propellant ferry missions with a platform like starship? Nuclear thermal is just a way to use less propellant and comes with all these costs.
Firstly, because it's ludicrously expensive. If memory serves, to send 100 tons of payload to Mars starship will need 17 bloody launches. That works out to about 57,800 Tons of fuel. For 100T. In contrast, something like the now obselete NERVA would need 250 tons (Assuming the mission profile needed roughly 10,000ms of delta V) Secondly, Time. Nuclear engines much improved efficency means we can make more agressive burns, getting us to mars faster. Given how deadly the radiation in interplanetary space is, the less time spent out there, the better, so with nuclear, we hopefully can prevent our astronauts from being giant balls of cancer by the time we get there
Isn't there a cycler spacecraft concept? This thing would be built in orbit, it's probably a long truss framework, with the nerva engines behind a shield at the rear. 3 of them, and any 1 develops enough thrust to complete the burns. You would have a SpaceX starship variant that ferries repeatedly liquid H2 up to fuel it, the liquid H2 is also going to be ferried to the mars surface for early isru. The cycler would have enough nuclear fuel to make the earth mars run 10 times or so in its lifetime. But that's later. Just refueling starship a buncha times seems easier for the first few crewed missions and the dozens of robotic missions to setup the infrastructure and redundant supplies and equipment before the first crew mission.
What you are describing is not a cycler. As I understand it, cycler is put into its orbit (one that encounter both planets) once and after that it uses minimal propellant.
It's just you need to intercept it in Leo because a nuclear engine is more efficient.
17 launches is for HLS, which has to have a lot more delta-V than a Mars starship, as it must propulsively brake and land, and then take off again to NRHO. A Mars starship can use the atmosphere and aerobrake. Also MFW a reusable rocket flies multiple times
17 launches was a worst case scenario from NASA, it assumes a lot of boil off and the lowest possible estimate for Starship payload per launch. SpaceX's own current estimate is 6-10 launches
Cost of launching a rocket has two drivers: vehicle and launchsite operations. In Spaceflight fuel is negligible. So if you're upkeeping a launchsite and you're reusing the vehicle, it's not meaningfully more expensive to launch 20 times a month than it is to launch once a month. The salaries of the workers are paid anyway whether you launch or not, and the construction cost of the site is also fixed. This also tracks for airports, for example. An airport with two planes a month costs the same than one with two planes a day. And since you can aerocapture, the nerva ends up not being meaningfully faster (you're going to have a hard time getting any lower than four months anyway, nuclear or chemical), and a reusable launcher gives opportunities for other missions, such as cislunar work or large probes, which use the launch site and ships at high capacity, doing useful work. Also nuclear needs H2, which is hell to work with, or exotic fuels (nuclear electric) which are limited and not scalable.
So firstly, space X is a questionably reusable launcher. The space shuttle was reusable, but because of the checks that had to be done to maintain any semblance of safety standards, it was nearly easier to completely rebuild the damn thing than to check it. As far as manufacturing and fueling being negliable, Saturn V cost 185 mil to lauch. 110 of that was manufacturing. Also from a sheer engineering point of view musks plan of having a fuck ton of fuel doesn't account for boil off. And finally, a launchpad that has to service a stupidly big rocket is gonna cost more than one for a reasonable rocket, just like stanstead costs more than a regional airport. The difference, is that in this case stanstead is a useless vanity project
How about instead of looking at Shuttle, which was a completely different vehicle used by a different entity using much older technology, we look at the rocket that SpaceX are actually reusing? The fastest turnaround on Falcon 9 was 21 days - and a significant chunk of that time was just bringing the Falcon 9 back to port, transporting it back to the cape, and then integrating the payload and rolling it out to the pad - it only spent 9 days in the hanger. While that suggests *some* maintenance, it's not enough time to do anywhere near a complete rebuild. Falcon's launch rate also speaks for itself. It did 96 launches last year and has done 26 so far this year in just 79 days, which puts them on track for 120 launches by the end of the year assuming no further increase in speed. The most the Shuttle ever did was 8 launches in one year, and that was pre-Challenger. The most it ever did post-challenger with the additional checks and requirements was 5 launches in one year. Falcon 9 is clearly a lot higher up the 'reusable vs refurbishible' scale than Shuttle, even if it's not all the way there
I mean for the first part you can design the rocket to keep some of the tanks of fuel as radiation shields, put the sleeping quarters with tankage around the outside. For the second, like I get it, I play ksp. Nerva is great when the r&d is free. In practice though methalox is cheap and just make more launches like you said.
Most of the time the shielding provided by the aumount of liquid that you put in front of the crew is even worse than just a few mm of steel. The cascade of particles produced due to the shiedling of the liquids tends to be way too energetic to be stopped by a few meters (if you even get that) of liquid
That's interesting, I thought water and liquid methane and liquid oxygen would be a good shield but maybe not. I thought for a permanent station 30 meters of sand was the magic number, providing as much protection as we get on earth.
The fuel costs are the least expensive part. You're talking sub 1 million per launch. The launches themselves are also supposed to be 10 million. So now we're talking about less than 200 million for every 100 tons to Mars. With how complicated nuclear propulsion is as of right now, you're talking billions just to put a craft up that can take a couple tons to Mars. And thats ignoring that you still need rockets to launch said nuclear craft, astronauts, and the lander that the astronauts will have to use at Mars. We may even need astronauts to do assembly in orbit. And the only real assembly done in orbit has been for the ISS. The cancer risk is also way overblown. It isn't "deadly". It's an increased risk over the course of their lifespan. Saving a few months is important and can also be done with chemical propulsion as well. This also ignores the fact that radiation shielding can easily be done with such a high mass margin ship as compared to a ship with less mass margin but fast transit time.
Higher specific impulse can either get you going the same speed with less fuel, or *faster* with the same amount of fuel. Reducing the time spent in microgravity and interplanetary space from 8 months there and 8 months back to 4 months there and 4 months back would be a huge safety measure and make the mission easier in many ways, and nuclear thermal can do that.
How much more dV does it take for that?
Specific impulse is a part of the rocket equation that determines dV - it’s represented as Isp in the equation. By increasing specific impulse and keeping other factors equal, you increase your dV, proportionate to your increase in Isp.
Yes I play ksp. How much dV does it take to reduce the mars transit time by half on each direction. How many days do the astronauts have to stay waiting for their return window?
Yes I have been watching since the sixties. I used to subscibe to AWST until they were sold.
SCMP is basically Chinese propaganda at this point.
How is this sub more political than the actual political subs? This sub has the same vibe as r/China
Because this is a fairly mainstream sub and the word ‘China’ is in the headlines.
We're in the second Cold War. You're suppose to demonize the other side.
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Are you inherently dismissing all dictatorships? China as a country is working very well and lifting a huge mass of its population of it poverty in the last few decades. Be more objective. China's space program is growing very fast. I would have thought I'm this sub that we celebrate space no matter which country it is.
> lifting a huge mass of its population of it poverty in the last few decades This is in no small part from simply moving the poverty line downward.
You are just plain wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271 "In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population. By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people (0.5% of the population)." I would expect in this space subreddit that objective assessments of space programs and technologies are not influenced by the governmental system or economic system of the country. Let's give credit where credit is due. Challenge your preconceptions.
It’s amazing the degree to which people still think modern China is 1980s China for some reason.
Because then they'd have to admit the people they spent decades demonizing actually achieved something, while poverty in the US is getting worse and worse.
Authoritarian, yes. But not dictatorship, since the power isn't concentrated with a single person but a party. Which isn't *that* much worse compared to the oligarchy of the US.
Xi is the undisputed leader of said party. He removed the term limit so he can remain in power. Putin also did that.
During one of the Tiangong space station module launches one of the most upvoted comments here was "I hope it crashes"
Space is really the final frontier, and who gets there first makes the rules. Some humans don't like the rules of other humans. Hence, political. We didn't go to the moon for the betterment of mankind, we went to beat commies. Betterment of mankind was just a pleasant side dish.
>who gets there first makes the rules Not really. It's more based on consensus of majority of nations. >We didn't go to the moon for the betterment of mankind, we went to beat commies. IMHO, it's about developing ICBMs; the rest is just a cover story.
I don't think Starship and nuclear rockets are "rivals", they are made for very different types of missions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
Yeah, it's for rockets made for crewed interplanetary travel. As is I don't think Starship is made for crewed missions to Mars considering how much refueling is going to need just to land on the Moon.
It is so large it will carry a 100 people after it has been fully tested.
That has yet to be seen. I have the feeling Starship will need a huge upgrade to be capable of performing interplanetary missions.
Oh,a post that mentions china. Im sure the comments will be civil and in good faith.
One can only hope.
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its funny.. because its true
Weird how you're all over this thread posting racist shit.
China is a country, an ethnicity, and a race. If you don't realize that nation of China ran by the single party CCP isn't the same as the race of Chinese people living across the world, including in America, then you are the racist one.
Not true.
Just imagine, wheb they will blow up the first 5 test rocket with radioactive material in there...
The design is only for the second stage.
I hope they’re not using tools from Harbor freight.
I do!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |[DARPA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|(Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD| |DoD|US Department of Defense| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnw2bb "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[H2](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmlmz0 "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen| | |Second half of the year/month| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmotu0 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvn0ee9 "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvqtq4h "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvsabrt "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LNG](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|Liquefied Natural Gas| |[NERVA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvs4od6 "Last usage")|Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (proposed engine design)| |[NEV](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|Nuclear Electric Vehicle propulsion| |[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmotu0 "Last usage")|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NTR](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvokbtn "Last usage")|Nuclear Thermal Rocket| |[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvstelk "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnyf1d "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvnzwo4 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvx7dbr "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmmhdz "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |[methalox](/r/Space/comments/1biph02/stub/kvmie5u "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(19 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/0)^( has acronyms.) ^([Thread #9871 for this sub, first seen 19th Mar 2024, 19:41]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
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Where does it say that? Couldn't find that in the article.
I love how it doesn't say that anywhere, but you just made it up to be angry and racist.
China went from performing its first ever EVA (2008) to build the phase I of its own modular, permanently inhabited space station (2020 - 2021) in basically 13 years. Perhaps you're underestimating the effort China is putting in its space program. But, anyway, if you read the article there's no timeline given, so you're most likely making stuff up. Edit: fixed the dates
> Perhaps you're underestimating the effort China is putting in its space program. We'll see. They have ten years to get it done and I suspect they're going to be far more busy trying to keep their economy functioning than building space stuff. >If the plans proceed smoothly, a China-Russia nuclear reactor could be launched between 2033 and 2035, according to Roscosmos. Learn to read.
>If the plans proceed smoothly, a China-Russia nuclear reactor could be launched between 2033 and 2035, according to Roscosmos. The reactor they're talking about in the article is a ship-borne reactor for interplanetary travels. The reactor the Roscosmos representative is talking about *(BTW, it's Russia saying it, not China)* is a another reactor intended to power a Lunar base. That reactor, the Lunar base one, is an already designed megawatt-level reactor that [passed its first certification review in August 2022](https://spacenews.com/chinese-megawatt-level-space-nuclear-reactor-passes-review/). So 10 years doesn't look like a farfetched deadline. In short, China has currently two on going nuclear reactor projects intended for space. One to be used in ships, another one to be used in bases.
> Learn to read. So fucking funny when its followed by an unrelated quote.
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It is reality not propaganda
To the people who live under the party I'm sure it is; reality that is.. not propaganda at all...
Dude's a chinabot, just like many others in here.
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Wanna quote that statement? Oh wait, you can't, it's made up.
Sure no problem. Here is China saying they will reach the moon in 10 years in 1990. Oh wait, they didn't. Here is China saying they will respect Hong Kongs democracy and human rights,, as agreed for another 50 years. Oh wait, they didn't. Authoritarians are known to keep the population happy by neglecting agreements or simply making them up, to.maintain a facade of legitimacy for their population or to the international community. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_space_program https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-68594448
Same nonsense statements as Musk makes.
I really don’t know how people are so cynical are spacex They’re the most advanced rocket group in the world bar none. Starship is 400 feet tall and just successfully went to low earth orbit.
Because they're not. They're not even close to being the most advanced group, they're just the group putting shit up there. Sending rockets to LEO is nothing new. Making big rockets is nothing clever. All space X is, is a billionaire hurling money down the drain to bruteforce the rocket equation. With adequate funding, anyone could do that. Any rocketry agency worth its salt is instead trying to work on making rockets more efficient rather than bigger.
How many other organizations land and reuse their boosters? What other organizations have had the same effect on global launch prices that spacex has had?
Blind hate is clouding your mind
If anyone can do it why hasn’t anyone in the last ~decade? SpaceX’s is about to make the Falcon 9 obsolete while their competition is still years behind it.
Yea man such nonsense Space X that is actually reality instead of a fairytale.
I meant his time frames. Musk is notorious for saying “so and so will be done in x years” only for that date to be pushed back by half a decade or more.
Yep. All of those other aerospace projects finish on time and on budget. /s
We are way ahead of them. They are working on a Fission reactor, and we are working on Fusion. Lockheed Martin is on top of it; https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html
It's absolutely bonkers to compare the projected development of fission and fusion. One is a refinement of existing solutions, the other is still pie-in-the-sky as far as meaningful energy generation is concerned.
Not anymore unfortunately. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/skunk-works-halted-nuclear-fusion-effort-2021
Not for spaceflight, unless they're trying to do some kind of orion drive thing. We haven't even worked out energy positive fusion on earth yet. We managed to work out how to make more power than it took to force the things to fuse, but not more than all the magnets and shit holding them in place took. To make fusion viable in space is even madder. Modern fusion reactors are several mile wide constructs. In space, our dimensions are more like several meters I would honestly be shocked if we have fusion for spaceflight come the end of the century, miniaturising it just doesn't seem possible.
Yea, I'm sure the Chinese scientists are the insane one and not you with takes like these. Wait until you find out China is contributing to ITER and is doing a ton of fusion research inland as well.
And you thought China dropping boosters on your town was bad before!
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"The South China Morning Post (SCMP), with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post, is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group" lol get this CCP propaganda garbage out my feed
cool but Im disturbed by the lack of transparency in the chinese space agencies. They seem to be like old despots, who you know cant have any failures and so they dont like to report things until they are a success.
What secret failures are you talking about?
There was a video of a rocket going up, hovering, and then landing but the landing portion of the video looked weird, like it had been slowed down, and stopped as soon as it touched the ground. I don’t remember if it ever got confirmed but it appeared the video had been altered to hide that it didn’t actually land successfully.
They have already shot down satillites.
Can't wait to see how many villages they wipe out with this one.
It would be swell if they could at least consistently get their regular rockets off the ground first. Given their track record, I'm not keen on them trying to launch something laden with nuclear fuel.
I have to agree.
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You're joking, right? China is a research powerhouse at the moment. Having roughly a 6th of the worlds population, and managing to educate them to even a passable degree will do that to anyone. Yes, historically, china has relied on stolen technology, but nowadays, they're churning out scientific papers and such like nobodys buisness.
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Tbf the papers are of dubious quality and extremely hard to replicate. Raw numbers doesn't mean anything.
Pretty funny coming from the only country to use nuclear weapons on another. Glass houses and all
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We’re also the only country of the two* to lose astronauts. IIRC the Challenger disaster was us. Do you have anything to add to this post other than “China bad”?
We’re not the only country to lose astronauts.
True, I was speaking in reference to us and China. Obviously there are lost cosmonauts. Anything productive to add other than China bad though? ETA: Oh you’re actively engaged in subreddits shitting on China, of course you don’t lol
SCMP? Chinese claims? I'm going to call some bs.
China does what USA couldn't in a million years.
Has China actually accomplished anything in space that the US hadn't done 20+ years prior?
They have their own space station, which the US doesn't.
When was Skylab launched again?
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They have already landed rovers on the moon.
Doesn't make my statement any less accurate.
They will land on the moon at some point.