To Mars on a shoestring - a nuclear powered shoestring - October 30, 2009
The words Russia and nuclear always stoke the fires of hacks who hark back to the cold war. But this time the finger hovering over the red button will be launching a rocket to Mars, rather than a missile to end civilisation.
So news that Russia is planning a nuclear-powered rocket to get men to Mars (and back again?) has got widespread attention. The report comes from Russian news agency RIA Novosti who have a short account of Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov’s address to a meeting of the commission on the modernization of the Russian economy. The spacecraft is still being designed, Perminov is reported as saying, with final plans finished by 2012. The cost will be at least 17 billion rubles, or $580 million.
Beyond that the report is patchy, but thanks to Rachel Courtland over at New Scientist and an AP story we can learn that at the moment rockets can be powered by the heat given off by certain decaying radioactive isotopes, or by using nuclear fission to generate electricity.
The Russian reactor is probably going to produce a megawatt or more of electrical power from a fission reactor. This kind of reactor/engine will be much more efficient once in space, but could kill the crew from exposure to massive doses of radiation on lift off. And according to the NS story, the budget really won’t buy much in terms of fission-reactor-powered-rockets. And the Register suggests that Russia will struggle to gather that 17 billion rubles regardless of whether it will be enough. Does Lada make rockets?
Image: A Lada car, from Wikimedia Commons
Comments
$580 million? For a rocket capable of getting humans to Mars? That's about half the cost of building an Olympic Stadium. Sounds like moonshine to me.
Posted by: M@ | October 30, 2009 06:32 PM
NASA, are you reading this?
This thing will fly almost at the same time your stone age "moon rocket" will.
And even if they will be over budget, say 100%, it still will be 50(100?) times cheaper.
Posted by: Karl | October 30, 2009 09:27 PM
A megawatt won't launch ground to orbit. The Space Scuttle is quoted 13 - 27 gigawatts. The Ares 1 rocket is 16 gigawatts. The reactor is cold until it gets into space. Then, it takes out a vast swath of astronomy with beta- and gamma-ray emissions.
$(USD)580 million can be financed out of pocket by one Rusisan petroleum oligarch.
Posted by: Uncle Al | October 31, 2009 12:31 AM