I’m sorry, it seems like you think anybody is suggesting that launching nuclear waste to space should be a means of disposal for it. Clearly that’s not a workable solution for a dozen reasons.

A common (and reasonable) objection to nuclear powered spacecraft is the question of “what happens if the rocket explodes?” That’s really what I was responding to.

The solution for nuclear waste is frustratingly simple, bury it. It’s only a political problem because of misguided nimbyism.

Basically, yeah it works. One aspect that makes it easier is that the hotter something is, the more effective radiative cooling methods are. A nuclear reactor like this is designed to run in the area of 1000 F, and it turns out that you can pump liquid salt through a radiator that size, and it can take the salt from 1200F to 700F.

Your right though, convection does make radiators far more effective, air or water just work a whole lot better than relying on radiative cooling. But regardless, you can still make radiative methods work. Every satellite in orbit has to do it, the ISS has to do it (and you can see the big grey radiators on it). And every space base will probably need to do it too.

That’s why we don’t do that already.

But we do, we do a lot. Russia does it more. It’s why the Voyager probes are still working and sending back data. It’s why the curiosity and perseverance rovers persevere to this day.

I wonder how they would hope to cool it though?

A big radiator, that’s all.

I mean, the surface of the moon, Mars, or any other body in the solar system without an atmosphere and magnetic field is already heavily irradiated. So ya know, dump some radioactive waste there and really it’s no worse than it was before.

Well, at the poles, in deep craters, the bottom of the crater will never get sun, ever. As a result, these polar craters are very cold. This is pretty special because it means that any water ice that may have fallen from comet impacts or other sources will stay frozen on the surface, never melting.

Water is everything on the moon, it can be used for drinking, and as a source of oxygen for breathing, but probably more importantly, it’s rocket fuel (hydrogen and oxygen). If you can collect ice on the moon you can refuel a rocket there, on a full tank you can easily make orbit given the moon’s low gravity, and still have enough gas in the tank to go literally anywhere in the solar system. The moon becomes a launching point to anywhere.

For sure, and that can definitely work. But, you will need three times the number of solar panels (since half the time the panels are doing nothing and if you’re storing a lot of energy, that means there’s a proportional amount of storage losses.)

And I honestly don’t know how much mass in batteries would be needed for 15 days worth of storage, but my instincts say too much.

Keep in mind that total mass to deliver can sometimes be the biggest cost limitation. A nuclear generator that gets delivered in one launch could be cheaper than otherwise much simpler solar panels and batteries if that solution requires two or three launches.

Yeah, theoretically if your positioning is perfect you can get that eternal twilight, where the sun just travels across the horizon in a circle. But you know the moon wobbles a bit, so while you might get a month or two of straight sun, you might get a month or two of straight darkness, where the sun is just below the horizon, just barely out of reach…

So what stops people from walking into the bathroom, lighting up, and laughing at the honest poopers now perfectly visable?

A friend of mine had a pretty shitty marriage, which ultimately led to a divorce. When he finally wanted to start dating again he figured he’d try tinder. Used the app to hook up just once, decided to start dating the woman, ended up marrying her, they’re happy to this day. I think they’ve been together 6 years or so, maybe married for 4.

I think he had planned to use it to hook up with a lot of people, but he couldn’t escape his monogamous nature. He wasn’t really gonna sleep with a bunch of women and never speak to them again, I don’t think he could.

Well, if you’re just in it for the points, I’d recommend telling jokes, that’s pretty reliable. But, just an observation here, what I’m seeing in this thread is your having real conversations. Making the kinds of comments that might just as soon get a downvote, not the witty one liners that are guaranteed karma. So I wonder if that’s really why you’re commenting, or if maybe there’s something else you’re getting out of it. Could be worth considering.

Well the sun works great for orbit around the moon, but on the surface a day/night cycle lasts a month. So that’s about 15 days of night at a time.

Obviously there’s no wind on the moon and burning things makes no sense. So literally the only options left are nuclear or lots and lots of batteries.

Wait, if people are a waste of time, why bother commenting online? If you don’t get anything out of interacting with the people close to you, what are you getting out of interacting with strangers?

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to land a sick burn here, I’m honestly curious.

Yeah, in the 80s they had crack. Not as easy to sell as social media, but it’ll also fuck you up. In the 50s the KKK and their brand of racism was mainstream, that also fucked people up. I guess my point is, yeah, things are different now, but they’re also kinda the same. And the solution is kinda the same too. Garbage in - garbage out; if you want to be a good person, live a good life, don’t consume shit. Don’t consume this terrible content and you won’t let yourself be influenced by terrible content.

Going out into the world is essentially the only way to meet people. Try it, see what happens.

Though, I was talking about ways to disconnect, things to do; how to enjoy life without social media. If you’re only focused on meeting people though, well actually I still recommend clubs and hobbies.

But then you build a much bigger one on earth. New nuclear power plants are often designed to generate over 1000 MW, NASA has designed small modular nuclear plants to deploy at space bases that generate 10 KW, a completely different scale.

So… The US has plans to build nuclear generators on the moon too, kilopower has been an ongoing project for the past decade and I have no doubt we’ll be ready to deploy one of these reactors as soon as we start building infrastructure on the moon again in the near future.

Nuclear power is not new for space, it’s an obvious choice, one of only two choices in fact. And for what it’s worth, Russia/USSR has had far more nuclear powered space probes over the years than the US has, so this isn’t exactly new for them either.

As for cooling, yeah, if you generate power you need to dissipate that heat. Your generator will put out heat which needs to be dealt with and then using that electricity will also generate heat which needs to be dissipated. That said, one kind of power is not harder than another, dissipating a megawatt of solar power is just as complicated as a megawatt of nuclear. So the real question is: how much power do you need? The complexity of the project will scale relative to that.

All in all, we’ve used nuclear power in space before and we will need to do it again, radiators are not all that hard.

Well, you can’t put permanent infrastructure on the moon without a plan to power it. So, a power plant has to be the first step, that’s why NASA has the kilopower program, even though we don’t have a permanent moon base yet.

Ok, so you can go out all the time without “going out” all the time. You don’t have to go shopping or to bars or expensive events, there are cheap activities out there. Parks are a good option, go for a walk, take photos of wildlife, go fishing, fly a kite. Or get into biking, or juggling, parkour. Or join a club, book clubs or film clubs are a lot of fun not expensive and you get to meet people and have real conversations. Go to your local library, they can tell you about upcoming free events, it connect you with clubs, or communities. While you’re there, ask the library if they have cheap or free tickets to things like museums or zoos, they often do.

There are a whole lot of ways to disconnect, but one thing is absolutely certain, you’re stuck on social media because you’re using social media. Just stop using it and it can’t trap you or control you. You can stay in touch with people with text messaging and phone calls, it totally still works. Also, a good reason to disconnect is just to distance yourself from “the algorithm”, don’t let some machine tell you what it thinks you should like, figure out what you like for yourself.

A swear, if a kilo of coke can pass a round of memtest, we’ll be in business.