[AR] Re: Faster Space Transport?
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 16:41:15 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 29 Aug 2019, David Spain wrote:
...Most current thinking is
in terms of "nuclear safe" orbits, where you can abandon a hot
reactor and have it stay up long enough that most of the bad
stuff has decayed before it reenters...
On the political side, I'd love to see a consensus on a "nuclear safe"
orbit. Good luck finding one.
Actually, for this case the thinking has already been done, and there is
reasonable agreement: no operation below 600-800km (depending on the
details), no final disposal below 1000km or so.
Note that I'm not talking about what it takes to get every empty-headed
politician to sign up for this, but rather about what answer a thoughtful
politician will get if he asks his sources whether there's a consensus on
the right answer. If so, yes, you still have to worry about selling it to
the empty-headed ones. But if there's no consensus -- if you're proposing
something new that nobody's thought about, so even a thoughtful politician
will be left wondering whether to believe that your proposal is a
responsible one -- then the problem instantly becomes an order of
magnitude harder.
Henry
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