Re: Fwd: Fission Powered Space Travel

["Thomas J Savin " <tjsav@lycos.com>]

General Electric in Cincinnati (aircraft division) had worked on a nuclear engine for space flight.  The project was scrubbed and the building sealed off - permanently due to contamination. FYI - Tom
---
Tom Savin

On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:27:11   
 JPreisig wrote:
>
>--part1_ea.fa19c13.2788122b_boundary
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> 
>
>--part1_ea.fa19c13.2788122b_boundary
>Content-Type: message/rfc822
>Content-Disposition: inline
>
>Return-path: <JPreisig@aol.com>
>From: JPreisig@aol.com
>Full-name: JPreisig
>Message-ID: <20.104ab311.27880d5c@aol.com>
>Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:55:40 EST
>Subject: Fission Powered Space Travel
>To: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 128
>
>Greetings,
>
>From:  jpreisig@aol.com
>
>     Hi to John Miller, Marie Miller, Tom LaBone, Nisy Ipe, Kevin Nelson,etc.
>
>
>     The notion of fission powered space travel is quite interesting, 
>although I'm
>sure the general public would still be terrified to see it in practice.
>     The jump from chemical propellants to fission-based propulsion clearly
>brings one from eV energies to MeV energies, thus allowing travel times from
>(and to) Mars to be reduced from 2 years to roughly 2 weeks.  I think travel 
>times less than 2 weeks would not be good for the astronauts.
>
>     In the last few years, on television I've seen a program about a 
>gas-cooled
>fission reactor, with fuel consisting of uranium (???) enclosed in spherical
>ceramic pellets.   It was a German-American research effort (involving some 
>fellow named Krueger and others).  The reactor cooling was switched off, and
>for several days the fuel was allowed to heat up.  The heating increased
>but eventually did not cause structural problems with the fuel geometry.  
>Thus,
>the reactor was stable against some sort of cooling turn-off "accident".
>I believe such a reactor would be a reasonable fission propulsion unit, 
>providing  
>it was efficient enough to get the job done.  It might even be good enough
>to be the fundamental design unit for future U.S. power reactors, if we ever
>start building them again (even just as replacement reactors for the reactors
>that are moving out of service in the next 10-20 years).
>
>     Does anyone know more about this reactor research effort, and if the 
>work 
>is still in progress???
>
>     Eventually, the folks at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) may get
>the NSTX (National Spherical Torous eXperiment) to become small enough to 
>be placed on a spacecraft, for use as a fusion propulsion drive.  Check out 
>the 
>PPPL web page for details on the NSTX,  They've come a long way from
>donut shaped Tokomaks (i.e. the TFTR).
>
>    See you on the space station....Honest!!!!!
>
>
>                                                       Joseph R. Preisig, 
>Ph.D.
>
>
>
>--part1_ea.fa19c13.2788122b_boundary--
>************************************************************************
>The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
>information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html
>


Get your small business started at Lycos Small Business at http://www.lycos.com/business/mail.html
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html