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That is a bad thing, you don't want it to penitrate the surface, you just want a thin, very thin flat layer of metal on the top. If you have alot of penitration, then you have much much more aluminum by volume to make that flat, even surface which would increase the weight to unreasonable levels.
Aerogel's density is still too high, and it is not mechanicly suited to making sheets only microns thick. You need a polymer for this.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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1/100 chance of disaster happening if it blows up. Radition all over the place.
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Nope, not really... and that 1% failure rate only means the rocket didn't work as planned, not nessesarrily exploding. Russian Souyz R-7 and American Delta-II rockets have a much lower than 1% "catastrophic" failure rate.
Contrary to popular beliefe, Uranium-235 fuel is not very nasty. In its naturally isotopic levels as the oxide, you can handle it with a pair of rubber kitchen gloves without any trouble. The really nasty radiation comes from the radioactive material that Uranium becomes over time, or when the reactor is actually running. A freshly fueled reactor that is powerd off is not dangerous, you could walk right up and hug the unshielded casing without any harm.
Furthermore, in a vapor core nuclear reactor, the fuel can be stored seperatly from the reactor in a sealed container, which could be built much like US RTGs, and survive re-entry and impact without any leakage, as has happend for both RTG re-entry incidents designed for contamination.
Also take into consideration that such a reactor won't need huge hundred-ton quantites of fuel; no - it will require only kilograms of Uranium, and if this were dispursed, it would not be enough to harm anyone... a little radiation is no trouble at all.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Tell that to greenpeace or the sierra club.
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Greenpeace/Sierra Club/et al. are heards of stupid ignorant cattle, driven by irrational fear of things they are told to fear, that they can't - or won't - understand. I would go so far as to say that they ultimatly desire a return to stone age... Since they speak from a platform of ignorance, stupidity, and hypocracy (especially concerning "clean" power) they deserve no heed.
Nasa has ignored them before when launching the far more dangerous plutonium power/heat sources on Galileo, Cassini, and now MER rovers, I see no reason they should monkeywrench a well designed and much less radioactive nuclear reactor.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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They are going to complain just for the sake of complaining. I agree with you nuclear fisson is the way to go, untill we can go fusion like the sun. The sun is a huge fusion reactor it can be tapped some how we just don't know how yet.See ya around I have to hit the sack.
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Gas core fission reactors do not exist yet, do they?
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Although vapor core reactors don't exsist, there isn't any big obvious showstopper either... I think its possible a conventional reactor could reach half the specific mass, but this depends alot on the method of cooling, the vapor core reactor has the advantage of high-temperature metal vapor cooling that keeps the radiator mass low. Nasa in their idiocy is designing Prometheous with ISS-style low temperature radiators, probably filled with Ammonia (morons!).
And even though a reactor of this power would not be easy to do, I don't see how you can make any solar powerd contraption work well at all, nor would it be reasonably sized for travel beyond the inner planets.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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