NASA looking into Nuclear powered space vessels
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Although they are a pile of shit and should be shut down as an organisation, does this run afoul of the UN treaty concerning radioactive materials in space or does that strictly concern weapons only?
As once it's up there, would be fairly easy to turn it INTO a weapon..
We already have satellites with a uranium power source flying around. Problem is that heat is a huge problem in space as you can't dump heat that easily (you can only radiate heat which isn't all that effective).
The ban applies to nuclear explosions. As long as they're not bring back Project Orion, it'll be fine.
Fairly certain most satellites are sent up into space with nuclear reactors on board powering them, so I don't think it would.
They're called RTGs, and yes, they are used in some spacecraft where solar panels wouldn't get enough sunlight.
That is a good point. We could travel through space, or nuke others more easily. Likely both will happen.
Yeah that treaty was in place so both the US and the USSR at the time couldn't have orbital nuclear platforms for obvious reasons. If I remember right biological is also included.
Though the 'rods from god' of putting tungsten rods in space is completely legal in the treaty...
True, but the Rods from God requires getting several hundred tons of tungsten up into orbit along with the launch platform. Probably would be easier if you built them in space with asteroid materials rather than ship everything up there.
I was told several years ago by Reliable Sources(tm) though that rocks thrown from the moon could already destroy the world!
Edit: Here's the link to Literally Who's insanity on this for people who forgot/don't know.
Very true, though if you're at that point of the tech tree, the fuck are you doing!? You can mine and manufacture in SPACE! Start claiming shit and build a fleet of spacecraft then waste time building rods lol.
I think I remember this. It was talked a lot during the early 80's when Star Wars was an actual thing.
The Outer Space Treaty restricts nuclear weapons and WMDs specifically. Nobody's bothered to figure out if reactors count as weapons or not (I'm betting on not), even though a sufficiently damaged reactor in orbit is basically a slow-motion dirty bomb, because nobody builds reactors for use in space. There's been maybe one or two very tiny reactors, and a bunch of RTGs (generators powered by heat from decay, rather than artificial fission reactions), none of which come anywhere near the scale they're proposing here. No need to legally get ahead of technology that doesn't yet, and may not ever exist.