/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12516167]

Why is Elon Musk wasting so much money on building classical rockets? He should be developing nuclear propulsion engines. Classical fuel+oxidizer engines are a dead end, only good for small payloads.

[Anonymous No.12516169]

[Anonymous No.12516171]

[Anonymous No.12516172]

>>12516167
The fuel is a fraction of the cost, he's trying to bring down the cost of what is actually expensive.
SpaceX is probably one of his more pragmatic ideas, it's integrating/developing proven technology and making it cheaper.

[Anonymous No.12516173]

[Anonymous No.12516183]

>>12516167
>nuclear propulsion engines
Easier said than done.
The reason why there exists no nuclear plane is because the radiation shield needed to keep pilots safe is too heavy to make shit fly.
Let alone a nuclear rocket.

It is, however possible to have a classical rocket send a nuclear reactor into space to provide power to some giant space station or whatever

[Anonymous No.12516184]

>>12516172
I guess it's not as expensive as I thought. I guess the toughest issue is stabilization + control of the rocket, and also comsystem. Would the dynamics of a nuclear rocket be different or is it still an inverse pendulum problem.

[Anonymous No.12516187]

>>12516167
Who the fuck will trust Musky with a flying nuke when his rockets explode all the time

[Anonymous No.12516188]

multiple reasons:
A. nuclear thermal engines are very very bad at lifting stuff off of the surface
B. the types of nuclear engines that are good at lifting things off of the surface require impractical engineering challenges (nuclear lightbulb), political opposition (Orion) or both (Nuclear Salt Water Rocket)
C. nuclear is buried in even more red tape than rocket launch, SpaceX looked into it but decided that it was impractical due to political concerns
so:
1. nuclear engines are NOT the answer on Earth
2. Nuke Mars

[Anonymous No.12516189]

>>12516183
you can just use distance and your propellant to insulate your payload from the reactor

[Anonymous No.12516192]

>>12516184
none of those are the biggest problem, the biggest problem is actually making the engine, and for nukes that requires the USGov climbing up your asshole and puppeting your around
unfortunately the USGov doesn't want you actually finishing your engine

[Anonymous No.12516194]

>>12516184
I actually don't know how a nuclear propulsion engine works, but considering it's not really something that has been tried and tested the R&D cost will be high.

>>12516183
>It is, however possible to have a classical rocket send a nuclear reactor into space to provide power to some giant space station or whatever
We'd need to be able to get water from asteroids first because the heat produced by the nuclear reactor cannot be dissipated.
Or do you mean a radioisotope thermoelectric generator?

[Anonymous No.12516196]

>>12516188
There are political concerns over nuclear reactors?
Bombs sure but the difference between reactor and bombs are like amonia from compost vs chlorine gas

Can't wait for smaller modular reactors so every town can afford their own nuclear plant

[Anonymous No.12516197]

>>12516194
some of them are easy
some of them are hard
some of them make environmentalists, generals, or NIMBY's want to kill you
all of the easy ones fall in the last category, and some of the hard ones

[Anonymous No.12516198]

>>12516167
Why would you make a post acting like you know something when you clearly don't know shit?
Is it bait? Do you know nuclear rockets exist and just assume they are better? Do you even know rocket engine preformace and preformance requirements change drastically based on what stage of flight they are used in?
If none of the above please elaborate.

[Anonymous No.12516200]

>>12516196
politicians and generals don't care
nuke bad

[Anonymous No.12516202]

>>12516194
Won't molten salt be enough of a coolant?
Getting water from asteroids doesn't seem like much of a problem if the site is the lunar surface. Shit is covered in ice

[Anonymous No.12516203]

>>12516196
Hopefully we'll get cheap small modular reactors but right now it doesn't look that probable. At least solar power is getting ridiculously cheap which also integrates better with electricity grids as we move away from the concept of baseloads.

[Anonymous No.12516205]

>>12516198
I know ion engines are used in space all the time now, but I'm talking about using a fusion reactor to power a rocketship.

[Anonymous No.12516206]

>>12516202
The issue is that we would need to eject the coolant and get more from somewhere else, heat won't dissipate through convection in vacuum but only through infrared radiation.

[Anonymous No.12516214]

>>12516203
>solar power is getting ridiculously cheap
Makes me cringe, honestly
Solar power consumes a massive load of glass and silicon and overreliance on that shit would cause huge environmental disaster. The lies of green energy should really be stopped before it causes irreparable damages

[Anonymous No.12516215]

>>12516205
In that case you are talking about in orbit rather than launch.
Nuclear rockets are a good option for use in orbit as their low thrust stops being a major issue, they are terrible for launch because even ignoring the radioactive exhaust they produce fuck all thrust.

[Anonymous No.12516217]

>>12516206
I mean, that is technically the point of molten salt.
It just recycles the coolant

[Anonymous No.12516218]

>>12516167
>He should be developing nuclear propulsion engines.
He literally cannot because of politics. Has it occurred to you that no entity ever continued developing these after a prototype was successfully tested?

[Anonymous No.12516225]

>>12516194
>the heat produced by the nuclear reactor cannot be dissipated.
It can be dissipated with radiators
Russia has already put nuclear reactors in space and already crashed one in canada
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

[Anonymous No.12516228]

>>12516214
There are alternatives even to that, like recursive heat pump heat engine.

[Anonymous No.12516235]

>>12516214
The glass and silicon are really not an issue though but it's true that toxic metals (like cadmium) are used in the production of them. However this is not an issue as long as it is taken care of properly.

>>12516217
MSRs still require something to dissipate heat into.
See pic related where that something is water, in space that'd be absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous No.12516244]

>>12516235
>not an issue though
It was calculated that to power the Earth with solar, you need as much as 500k km^2 worth of solar panels.
That's 1 whole California

Realitiscally, you need 3x because it works only for some 14hours and you need a margin of error in case of clouds and rain.

Forget the ecological damages just to set them up.
The sheer amount of resources needed for that shit would destroy so much shorelines and kill off marine species.

The world is already running out of sand because of sand is major component in construction. Let alone use them for solar panels.

[Anonymous No.12516248]

>>12516244
>Realitiscally, you need 3x because it works only for some 14hours and you need a margin of error in case of clouds and rain.
No you are thinking like how energy grids used to work, look into the European electric grid integration.
And of course we won't exclusively power it using solar power, but it will end up producing the majority of our power because it's the cheapest power source and the price will keep going down.

[Anonymous No.12516251]

>>12516244
>The world is already running out of sand
We are running out of the best kind of sand for foundations, if you are making glass you don't need that kind.

[Anonymous No.12516255]

>>12516167
Classical rockets allow him to dominate the Low Earth Orbit market put up Starlink and farm ungodly amounts of hard cash to build a Star Empire that will easily afford to fund Fusion reactors and Warp drive.

Spending 40 years researching and toying with theoretical new drives would strand us on Earth like Musk was never born.

[Anonymous No.12516256]

>>12516248
We said the same thing about coal once till we saw too late how much damages it has done

Coal survived for so long because there are no alternatives. Can't say the same about renewable lies

>>12516251
You still need a solar plant that can be seen from space. Huge environmental disaster right there

[Anonymous No.12516261]

>>12516256
>We said the same thing about coal once till we saw too late how much damages it has done
That's a fallacy, just because something was bad once doesn't mean something else will be bad.

[Anonymous No.12516265]

>>12516256
>You still need a solar plant that can be seen from space. Huge environmental disaster right there
Farm land takes up 11% of land area which is already a big environmental disaster and arguably much worse.

[Anonymous No.12516275]

>>12516261
Solar is literally the biggest consumer of earth minerals per mWh
And the most inefficient
And the highest land consumption

P.S
Don't get too excited about "Solar going cheaper"
It would max out at 40% or double of what we have now. Then that's about it

>>12516265
Solar farms are literally cities of glass that burns any birds that fly above. Not including the amount of consumed resources to build them. No it's not. worse


Later

[Anonymous No.12516289]

>>12516275
>It would max out at 40% or double of what we have now. Then that's about it
That's still extremely cheap per watt, that'd be 3x cheaper than nuclear.

>Solar farms are literally cities of glass that burns any birds that fly above. Not including the amount of consumed resources to build them. No it's not. worse
Are you talking about PVs or the ones where they use mirrors?

[Anonymous No.12516293]

>>12516275
I don't care about the birds it really isn't that many dying. At least I know we are getting more solar power in the future and I support that. Finally on the winning team :^)

[Anonymous No.12516297]

>>12516275
Are you a shill or just been listening to shills?

>highest land consumption
Open cut coal mines win by far.
>burns any birds that fly above
They reflect less light than the ocean.

Sure solar does have some issues, mainly the lack of grid-level storage but it's far from terrible.
IMO the best options are hydro, wind, solar and fission with pumped hyrdo storage where the geography is suitable. All of these have issues, nothing is perfect but few are as bad as coal / natural gas which is still the most used.

[Anonymous No.12516464]

>>12516167
SpaceX is mostly in the LEO/GTO buisness.
Chemical rockets are the only technology so far that gets us into LEO without major issues as they provide a good thrust/weight ratio, good enough specific impulse and good enough safety.
Nuclear propulsion on the other hand has a worse thrust/weight ratio, great specific impulse and usualy a radioactive exaust.

For lower stages, you obviously don't want nuclear engines, but reuseable chemical ones.
If you only need to go to GTO, there isn't realy a reason to include nuclear engines, especialy since one would need to dispose of the upper stage.
Instead we just use slightly larger upper stages to go from LEO to GTO.
So we use chemical rockets for stuff in earth orbit as GTO is the highest orbit we launch stuff into at a significant volume.
Only when you need to go far beyond earth orbit on a high energy trajectory, nuclear realy starts making sense.
But even then chemical rockets have a tendency to be cheaper while having more managable risks.

So:
>nuclear first or second stage
Not going to happen.
>nuclear third or higher stage
Maybe, but unlikely.

[Anonymous No.12516472]

>>12516183
Russia already has neuclear powered rockets.

[Anonymous No.12516495]

>>12516167
nuclear is good only if you're already in orbit. You must bring the uranium / plutonium / whatever in orbit with classical rockets.

[Anonymous No.12516498]

>>12516196
>Can't wait for smaller modular reactors
it will never happen. too dangerous if meltdown happens and someone could steal the radioactive material and easily manufacture nukes.

[Anonymous No.12516500]

>>12516472
no they don't (as first / second stages at least)

[Anonymous No.12516507]

>>12516464
This. You have to pay the light bill. And low earth orbit is in demand for communication.

Can’t wait to cut the Comcast cord. You spacex fucks need to hurry up.

[Anonymous No.12516927]

>>12516167
It would be better for someone else to develop a nuclear thermal rocket for an upper stage while SpaceX focuses on bringing down the costs in reusuability.

[Anonymous No.12516941]

>>12516167
If you have a better business model, why don't you go and build your own startup? C'mon, OP. There are billions of dollars waiting for you.

[Anonymous No.12517051]

how many spacex rockets have blown up
do you really want them to start using nuclear fuel?

[Anonymous No.12517074]

>>12516167
His companies are a meme. Any company who offers IPOs are a meme, period.
If he has private companies, please correct me.

[Anonymous No.12517093]

>>12517051
Yes

[Anonymous No.12517095]

>>12516183
Nigga they put a thorium reactor on a B-36 back in the '60s

[Anonymous No.12517094]

>>12517074
You are retarded

>builds viable consumer electronic cars
>literally about to put every major ISP out of business with reliable low earth orbit satellite internet that is already being sold to latitudes north of Redding, CA
>actually building and launching rockets while advancing rocket technology

I probably forgot something but please let me know what your pedigree looks like

[Anonymous No.12517102]

>>12516184
>100s of scientist and engineers working full time
vs.
>”I thought that...” from a basement dweller nobody

[Anonymous No.12517125]

>>12516167
I'm assuming this is a bait because you cant be that stupid.

[Anonymous No.12517173]

>>12516167
>Why is Elon Musk wasting so much money on building classical rockets? He should be developing nuclear propulsion engines. Classical fuel+oxidizer engines are a dead end, only good for small payloads.

What you say is true, but nuclear engines should be used for interplanetary trips, while classical rockets to put things from the ground to LEO. We need big rockets like the sea dragon, and Elon is taking that route. When the time is right, we will build true spaceships in orbit.

[Anonymous No.12517183]

>>12516194
>but considering it's not really something that has been tried and tested the R&D cost will be high.
Wrong
https://youtu.be/UDhbTNiuKp4

[Anonymous No.12517189]

>>12517183
>one single prototype means it has been tried and tested
anon, I...

[Anonymous No.12517196]

>>12516297
>>12516289
Nope. If we are going for future developments, Smaller Nuclear Modules are being researched which would reduce the price of nuclear power by as much as 4-12x cheaper at 1/4 the construction time

And yes.
It is completely impossible to completely rely on solar power because it is too inefficient, too much resource consumption, and too unreliable for permanent use.

Coal and Natural gas has an efficiency of 60%
Wind is 40% (max at 60)
Solar is 20% (max at 40)
Nuclear is 90-95%


>>12516293
There are 50 nuclear sites being made in the next 5 years
Only 60 were closed in the last 10

Sorry, solar is a meme if you know how it works

[Anonymous No.12517199]

>>12517095
Yeah, you mean the nuclear plane that has no radiation shield and killed its crew in a span of 3 years?

[Anonymous No.12517205]

>>12516498
Stop eating popsci, retard

[Anonymous No.12517300]

>>12517205
But its true. They would never be approved. Too risky to give random towns small reactors. They will make do with an extension cord.

[Anonymous No.12517304]

If post is prime LEX > Musk

[Anonymous No.12517313]

>>12517300
That's like saying that you cannot have a oil plants in a town. Retard.
Oil is so much more dangerous than nuclear waste

[Anonymous No.12519690]

>>12517205
I think the only illiterate retard here is (You), brainlet

[Anonymous No.12521102]

>>12516215
t. Kerbal Space Program

[Anonymous No.12521194]

>>12521102
>1.3 t/w ratio on engine alone
>good for anything but orbital use
Compair the requirments to the actual preformance and you'll see why they were ditched.
https://fas.org/nuke/space/nerva-spec.pdf

[Anonymous No.12521195]

Imagine if that lad had nuclear engine.

[Anonymous No.12521238]

>>12516196
These small plants exist and are found in military ships or submarines. Might be a good idea to power a small city, but it also would make sense if some would not want the technology to be disseminated too much.

[Anonymous No.12521252]

>>12516167
Good luck getting those approved for travel in the Earth's atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.12521261]

>>12516256
Why do you think the entire planet's solar panels would all be concentrated together in one location?

[Anonymous No.12521269]

>>12516167
Spacex is not a research lab, they chose to work with proven technology, probably the smartest thing musk ever did.

[Anonymous No.12521537]

>>12517189
>>one single prototype
Right, you are retarded.

[Anonymous No.12521695]

>>12521261
Even if you spread them out, the entire landmass consumed remains the same.

[Anonymous No.12521703]

>>12521194
they haven't improved since the 70s?

[Anonymous No.12521869]

>>12521703
Not really because no one has been working on them.
Once rockets are deemed reliable enough that we don't need to worry about it exploding on the pad we might see development start again.

[Anonymous No.12521889]

>>12521695
>Oh no, my roof where I live is going to have some solar panels on it. This is the end of humanity as we know it. What? The supermarket too? That's where we were going to put the orphanage and puppy hospital.
You're grasping at the most ridiculous straws and destroying the credibility of all who agree with you.

[Anonymous No.12522028]

>>12516167
> Why is Elon Musk wasting so much money on building classical rockets?
Short answer? Because he can.

Do you really think billionaires like Musk and Bezos give a fuck about going to space? They run their businesses off the principle of fuck it, if the employees don't like working for $15/h, let them find other jobs.

Their space programs are just something to do, that's all.

[Anonymous No.12522064]

>>12521889
>muh solar roofs
1. Not all cities have decent sunlight.
2. Utility grade solar panels are not available for the common household
3. On average, the number of solar panels needed to power a 1-floor house (24/7) would translate to about 3/4 of the area space. Cities have skyscrapers that minimize horizontal space while increasing vertical space - not including factories. The number of solar panels you need would probably be 5x the area of the city

Maybe use solar roads?
Oh wait, that was a meme that was super susceptible to damages and filth

[Anonymous No.12522105]

>>12522028
IMO Musk actually wants us to become interplanetary while Bezos just saw ULA getting billions for nothing and wanted a cut, Branson seems to be the only one treating it as a hobby.

[Anonymous No.12522280]

>>12516167
>year is 2040
>musk's nuclear rocket propulsion system is ready for launch
>3, 2, 1, lift off!
>nothing happens
>rocket only produced 1 ton of force
>rocket weighs 500 tons
shiiieeeeeeeeet

[Anonymous No.12522289]

>>12522280
Do a nuclear bomb propulsion then

[Anonymous No.12522694]

>>12522289
well, it certainly would generate enough force..

[Anonymous No.12523116]

>>12516167
I feel suden urge to stick weapon grade plutonium up your ass.

You can carry more in space on hydrogen generated by uranium in powerplant.

[Anonymous No.12523122]

>>12516167
Small payloads like ISS.

With todays automatization, elon could build ISS in two days from one launch site.

Maybe the warehouse is not big enough for all the rockets, but if they can refuel fast enough...

[Anonymous No.12523987]

>>12522289
I heard that it is also good for the health of people living nearby

[Anonymous No.12524023]

Spacex is mostly trying to sort out getting stuff into orbit and then to the Moon or Mars, which is not massively far away.
For getting things into orbit nuclear propulsion is somewhat problematic.

In the medium to long term it definitely makes sense to invest in nuclear propulsion though.
In an ideal world Nasa would focus on this (ie; making spaceships, not launch vehicles) and leave the (literal) heavy lifting to spacex.

[Anonymous No.12524072]

>>12516167
Not safe + bad PR

[Anonymous No.12524182]

>>12516167
Because elon musk is a scammer. it's what he does.

[Anonymous No.12525977]

dont you just love the fact that all this stuff is real and can get you off the planet but they put it behind a giant paywall and a bunch of regulations to enslave you and keep you on the planet. fuck this gay earth.

[Anonymous No.12525983]

>>12516167
>not knowing how to store a shitload of alpha particles to build pressure up and release it.
kek. lol look at these fucking amatures over here ayys.

[Anonymous No.12525995]

>>12516167
1. Use chemical rockets to get to orbit
2. Use nuclear rockets to go to mars

Easy

[Anonymous No.12526004]

>>12516167
Which government would allow a private individual to build a rocket-powered by mini-nukes? That would mean allowing a private individual to make mini nukes

[Anonymous No.12526325]

>>12526004
No!
Uranium pellets are just 20% enrichment
Bombs are at 80-90%
That's toilet cleaner vs a chemical gas