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Later:
Ukraine’s controversial but wildly successful fledgling domestic space program has successfully landed exo-atmospheric tactical drones on the moon and destroyed crucial construction components of Russia’s moon reactor facility, forcing many to question if it’s feasible to continue the project
It's to serve as a power source for a potential moon base, apparently.
Ohh, I was confused because I assumed the power would somehow be transported to Earth, which seems rather inefficient.
I like the idea personally
As an infrastructure project its conceptually pretty sick. A nuclear power plant would be fairly ideal for the first long-term human presence on the moon.
The problem is that it's Russia and China doing it.
I'm sure that money couldn't be better spent. It's not like there are hundreds of millions of Indians living in horrific levels of poverty.
how would you even start with the cooling? that sounds like a nightmare
... That's a very good point actually. Vacuums are rather insulating. Without convection cooling from a fluid, you're relying on radiative heat transfer for cooling, and that's piss poor.
Lots of radiators.
No wind...
That's why it's a nuclear plant instead of a wind turbine /jk
I suspect you would dump the heat into the Moon itself. You wouldn't need that much power up there.
Only operate when your side of the moon is dark or even near the poles where it can be coldest? I'm not sure what the plan is for daytime operations since it apparently gets really hot.
No atmosphere up there to insulate so the temperatures fluctuate to extremes
No atmosphere means very little thermal radiation is pulled from radiators.
I imagine the best bet would be to drill into the surface of the moon and sink your radiators into the ground, fill the gaps with a material that transfers heat well.
Easiest version of that would probably be to lay the radiators on or just below the surface and bury them in a regolith concrete mixture of some sort. Probably not as efficient as drilling straight in, but way less complicated I imagine.
I read this in chief O'Brien's voice
Unfortunately you can't really turn off a nuclear reactor.
Russians: "Sure you can, it's just this red button right here..."
If you have enough ice, you evaporate it.
If not, heat pump/ sink into basalt probably.
Considering India and China are nuclear armed geostrategic rivals, with ongoing territorial disputes, and not too distant history of hot wars, I think this type of cooperation can be a good thing.
But that's also why I'm skeptical about how much dual use technology they'd be willing to share with each other. And when you're talking about space travel, or moon bases, practically everything is dual use technology.
If anyone is unclear why Russia would be involved, it's their rocket and nuclear technology. Or rather, the Soviet legacy of R&D that is still useful.
I'm not sure this is a great idea.
For what purpose??? Solar power makes the most sense on the moon. No atmosphere.
But it would require a stable power supply – which only a nuclear reactor can provide, as the Moon’s lengthy lunar nights make solar energy unreliable.
Just put 4 solar stations equidistant around the moon and wire them together. Boom, stable solar power!
Boom thousands of kilometer of cable to install and loss of power on transmission.
They would need lots of power to run life support, produce air and fuel from water. Solved problems on nuclear subs.
And batteries are heavy. It would take a lot of lifts to get enough capacity up there.
The trouble with solar on the moon is that the day-night cycle is a month long. You have to figure out what to do during the 2 Earth weeks worth of night.
I suppose with a polar base, you could have several solar farms strategically placed so that at least one of them is operational at any given time, but that's a lot of infrastructure and this is early days.
Of all the things to kick-start industry on another planet, isn't a nuclear fucking plant the most complex?
