Timothy Birdnow

This would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.

China Plans for Lunar Base Include Nuclear Power Plant on Moon's Surface

China signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. That treaty bans nuclear weapons in space, and even nuclear power by and large. To build a nuclear reactor on the Moon you would have to first ship nuclear material to orbit, then on to the Moon. There is no radily-obtainable fissile materials on the Moon.

It's also unnecessary as you have two weeks of sunlight and no atmosphere, making solar power ideal. Yes, you have two weeks of darkness too, but that can be easily dealt with. Build at the South Pole, say, and you have sunlight 24/7. Or put solar power satellites in orbit. You could also use the difference in temperatures between the sunlight surface and the shadows to generate power. The lunar regolith will retain heat for a long time and you can use the differences. It would be easier than lugging Uranium or other fissile materials, as they are extremely heavy and requier much delta v (thrust) and thus much fuel.

The reason the Chinese want to use nuclear is to "accidentally" leave some in low earth orbit so they have weapons hanging over our heads. I assure you this won't be just reactor-grade uranium but probably plutonium.

In the late '50's and early '60's the U.S. pioneered the use of atomic power to propel a spacecraft. Called Project Orion, it used atomic bombs chucked under a big, heavy plate with a shock absorber attached. The exploding nukes propelled the craft. This was the best spacecraft drive ever invented by Man, and tests using non-nuclear explosives showed it worked beautifully. You could get to Mars in a month with it (rather than the six to ten months required using chemical rockets). You could life a million pounds off the Earth. Whole space colonies could be shipped with it. In fact, the Orion is so good it actually could be used for INTERSTELLAR travel. It would take about a hundred and twenty years to reach the Alpha Centuri system, and it would require a LOT of nuclear bombs, but it is the only interstellar drive we could actually build right now with off-the-shelf technology. It wouldn't be practical of course, but you could send a probe (at enormous cost.)

We dropped it with the signing of the Outer Space Treaty because the nuclear bombs that powered Orion were outlawed in space.

The same happened with the NERVA - Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application - which used a nuclear reacttor to superheat plasma and eject it in rocket fashion. Our experiments with nuclear propolsion ended with the Outer Space Treaty and for the same reason; everyone feared nuclear material in orbit.

So the Chicoms are now going to renege on the treaty. if they do we should do likewise. I hate to start putting nukes in space because it means a much faster attack is possible, but supersonic ICBM technology has largely made this a moot point anyway; they can skirt missile defense systems and change their course on a dime. We could still possibly hit an incoming missile from orbit, but a supersonic will be extremely difficult to take out. And dead is dead; you only have fifteen minutes from the time of launch of a standard ICBM until your incinerated anyway.

Deterrence requires we have everything they have and perhaps more. It's what stopped the Big One with the Soviets, after all. But now we have China coming with smiles, our ostensible friends. And so many American politicians and plutocrats are bought and paid for.

If they want to build a nuclear-powered moonbase so be it, but we'd better have a system in place to knock out anything with that material and do so quickly.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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