Timeline for Would a torchship be legal?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 1 at 13:37 | comment | added | jwenting | @jpa possibly, I don't know the details of the classifications. Of course in space a dirty bomb is pretty much useless as those depend on contaminating the environment, making it harder or impossible for people (civilians or enemy combatants) to operate in it and during a space battle you'd just create a small cloud of radioactive particles for enemy ships to fly through, the radiation being completely blocked by the same shielding that stops all other radiation hitting that ship. | |
| Nov 1 at 13:01 | comment | added | jpa | @jwenting Yeah, not into nuclear explosion. But dirty bombs definitely count as WMD. | |
| Nov 1 at 12:09 | comment | added | jwenting | note that fission reactors can NOT be turned into nuclear weapons. At worst, a large enough conventional explosion inside a fission reactor's containment structure would cause the spread of radioactive contamination akin to a dirty bomb (which is actually what happened at Chernobyl, a very large conventional hydrogen explosion caused the lid to blow off of the reactor vessel and pulverised material from the reactor to disperse on the wind). | |
| Oct 31 at 18:13 | comment | added | Perkins | Note that it was the prohibitions on above-ground nuclear testing and on nukes in space that put an end to the original research on nuclear propulsion. But fusion without needing a fission trigger does have a lot more potential for using safely. | |
| Oct 31 at 13:10 | comment | added | A McKelvy | NASA and DARPA are currently developing a flight demonstrator nuclear fission rocket engine intended to fly in 2027 (see link). One of the key benefits of the project will be establishing regulatory precedent on launching, flying, and deorbiting something with the potential for criticality. I figure the efforts will be relevant to this discussion once they happen in a few years. ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230018491/downloads/… | |
| Oct 31 at 2:46 | vote | accept | controlgroup | ||
| Oct 30 at 18:34 | history | answered | jpa | CC BY-SA 4.0 |