{"id":6500,"date":"2012-12-28T16:23:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T00:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=6500"},"modified":"2012-12-30T09:30:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T17:30:30","slug":"forty-tons-of-plutonium-for-bomb-propulsion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/forty-tons-of-plutonium-for-bomb-propulsion","title":{"rendered":"Forty Tons of Plutonium for Bomb Propulsion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/nowhere-japans-growing-plutonium-stockpile-064038796.html<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

A half century after being developed, nuclear pulse propulsion remains the only practical system of interplanetary travel. What is required to launch a bomb propelled mission to the outer solar system? Well, first you need.\u2026..bombs.<\/p>\n

There is no shortage of bomb material on planet Earth. The problem is lack of a vehicle that can get this material to the nearest place a nuclear mission can be launched; the Moon. For over a quarter of a century a launch vehicle capable of sending significant payloads (and people) to the Moon has been lacking. The Space Transportation System, aka the space shuttle, was a dead end as far as exploration due to the lack of funding for a Sidemount cargo version.<\/p>\n

Now we wait on the SLS.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2012\/12\/121228100748.htm<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Only this human rated Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) with a powerful escape tower will be suitable for transporting survivable packaged fissionables to the Moon. It is not only the fissionables that are required; hundreds of tons of water from lunar ice deposits are necessary to fill the radiation shield for any such Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO).<\/p>\n

Eventually lunar resources can be used to actually construct atomic spaceships and also the thorium reactors necessary to power colonies in the outer system. It is the establishment of a beam propulsion infrastructure that will finally open up the solar system to large scale development. This will require a massive infrastructure on the Moon. Such a base will serve as insurance against an extinction level event wiping out our species. As such it deserves a full measure of DOD funding. Like that trillion dollars that is going to be spent on the F-35 stealth fighter over the next half century.<\/p>\n

Only monthly Heavy Lift Vehicle launches of payloads to the Moon can be considered as a beginning to a true space program- where Apollo left off. There is no cheap and there is no flexible path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/nowhere-japans-growing-plutonium-stockpile-064038796.html A half century after being developed, nuclear pulse propulsion remains the only practical system of interplanetary travel. What is required to launch a bomb propelled mission to the outer solar system? Well, first you need.\u2026..bombs. There is no shortage of bomb material on planet Earth. The problem is lack of a vehicle that can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,38,12,9,873,2,8],"tags":[133,2124,1101,2128,1102],"class_list":["post-6500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense","category-engineering","category-existential-risks","category-military","category-nuclear-energy","category-nuclear-weapons","category-space","tag-colonization","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-pulse-propulsion","tag-space","tag-space-launch-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}