Re: Low Isp vs High Isp in Interplanetary Orion Warships

In article <1156081706.841712.312870@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
IsaacKuo <mechdan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Importing U and Th to the outer system

I think it would be relatively low, mostly limited to military
applications.

If I recall correctly, a 1 GW reactor goes through about
1 tonne of U a year. Assuming Trans-Jovia is about as developed
as the Earth is now, they'd need to import about 10,000 tonnes
of uranium a year. Compare that to one supertanker, by definition
in excess of 250,000 tonnes.

If it's all U 235 @ $30k/kg, we're still only talking
$30 B a year, which is peanuts compared to the size of a
developed economy: even underpopulated Canada has an economy
about thirty times larger and we are just 2% of the world
product.

In the inner Solar System, most energy comes from solar
power stations. Beam powered thermal rockets are used
for most interplanetary transport.

In the outer Solar System, most energy comes from
electromagnetic power stations around the gas giants.
A mix of microwave beam powered electric engines and
thermal engines are used.

One application where nukes might be used a lot is
asteroid "mining". I feel it's more plausible to transport
entire asteroids toward the processing industry, rather
than transporting processing facilities to the asteroids
(too much down time in transit). One way to get the
asteroids where you want them is with a series of nukes.
However, I my gut feeling is that it's not really necessary
to use nukes and that it may be more economical and
operationally easier to simply directly impact the asteroid
with "inert" slugs.

There was that gravity tug idea from last year as
well.

The vetting process for handing out A-bombs better
be a lot better than what we use for dynamite.

That just leaves mostly military applications--Orion style
pulse rockets for maneuvers far away from friendly
beam power stations, and fission reactors for high
power equipment.

Now _that_ would be a cool (and, afaik, unexploited) scenario. All the
cool cutting-edge stuff is happening in the Outer Satellites, Earth is
a backwater whose only importance is as an extractive economy -
fissionables for energy, and other heavy metals of varying degree of
importance. President-For-Life George Bush VIII's chief importance is
his vice-like control of the Thorium Fields.

In the sort of Solar System I'm imagining, the concentration
of fissionables in the inner Solar System has more troubling
consequences. You've got the inner Solar System "old world"
which has most of the military capabilities, contrasted with
the outer Solar System "new world" which has most of the
economic wealth (thanks to abundant electrical power).

The economic engine of the outer Solar System is highly
vulnerable to "evil dictatorships". Unlike the inner solar
system, where solar power is somewhat decentralized and
available to practically anyone at any scale, the outer
solar system relies almost entirely on centralized microwave
beam power farms. Control the power farms and you
control the region. This makes them enticing objectives
for potential despots or "liberators"...

Our power systems are highly centralized and yet while
Enron was able to play silly buggers in California, they did
not take the state over.

--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
.

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