A Nuclear Space Shuttle is a TERRIBLE Idea
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- An aerospace engineer's opinion on why For All Mankind's Pathfinder space shuttle is just a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Support me:
Patreon - / thebeardypenguin
Streamlabs (for donations) - streamlabs.com/thebeardypenguin
Socials:
Music channel - / @picardieofficial
Discord - / discord
Twitter - / beardypenguin
Music:
Comet Halley by Stellardrone
Link: stellardrone.bandcamp.com/alb...
License: creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Centum Celebration by Mikael Hellman
Link: filmmusic.io/song/7971-centum...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
#ForAllMankind #ForAllMankindSeason3 #AppleTV - Наука та технологія
Thanks for watching Penguinauts! I really hope you enjoyed the video as it's indicative of the style of content I plan to start making over the next few months.
I'm off on a sorely needed two week holiday now, but once I get back I'll be Youtubing full time.
Expect to see the finales of Beyond Kerbol and To Boldly Go, along with the continuation of For All Kerbalkind in mid July :)
Beardy will you build a moon base in for all Kerbalkind like the one in for all mankind?
@@colesims7269 absolutely!
YYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!! This is very nice information thanks for the awesome vids Beardy!
When a great UA-camr is getting a break: mmmmmmmm dat means they aren't fully a slave to the algorithm, pog.
It's past mid July now
"The main thing is that the congress gets drunk and adds a 0 to NASA's budget"
This got me
Would like that to happen anyway...
In the show a law was passed allowing nasa to make their own money as well.
With vodka from the Soviet Union
Very good video! One thing to point out: Pathfinder was air launched over The Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Florida, not Vandenberg. It's still a risk if any nuclear debris falls into the ocean but its unlikely to hit anywhere populated
If you look below the shuttle though it's clearly over land, you can see fields and towns. There are small lines of dialogue that hint at it either launching from the Cape or from Vandenberg, so looking at the scene I thought it made more sense for it to be launching from California. Regardless, it's still not too far from Orlando and Miami if it does launch from Florida.
@@TheBeardyPenguin It'd be a weird choice for them to launch from Vandenberg, but I doubt they put enough thought into it. Usually Vandenberg launches are south, over the ocean, and so mainly used for high inclination satellite launches. But figuring out a launch profile for an air-launched nuclear shuttle is baffling, too; you'd want an abort option somewhere not too far from the flight path, in case something goes wrong and it needs to glide to a landing. But then, much of Pathfinder doesn't make a lot of sense; at the very least, it needs drop tanks just to make it to orbit, even with the ISP of the NERVA. The writers could have used a bit more technical guidance on the whole thing.
@@oasntet from what i can remember, the first pathfinder launch carried a payload of missiles because the DOD requested it or smth
It must be not far off from Guam, because in S2E9 a sea dragon launched from Guam and the first Pathfinder shuttle launched at almost the same time and managed to rendezvous.
Actually it's supposed to be somewhere over the South-West, (my impression was Nevada) and it's STILL not a good idea because it literally can't carry enough shielding to make it work! Once they start the reactor then the crew on the shuttle is dead, the crew on the mother aircraft are dead, (how does a "shuttle" that's vastly heavier than the carrier aircraft "lift off" instead of dropping like a rock anyway) and anyone within several dozen miles just got a dose of instant 'sunshine' ranging from lethal to just being too sick to want to live. Really the whole series went off the rails near the end of season 1 and everything that's come after is just worse.
"Could potentially be ejecting highly radioactive material over LA"
Depending on who you ask that's probably a good thing.
Yes, the Belkan's take on nuclear material on one's homeland is exactly what I should trust.
As someone who grew up near LA... yes please nuke us.
For that matter how would you tell the difference?
The second you gave the ISP of the Nerva I just thought “time to get a ton of science in RO”
I wouldn't be so quick to make the switch. Nuclear engines are much heavier than chemical rockets and the fuel is much less dense. This means that from my experience ntrs only become worth it when getting into the hundreds of tons of reaction mass.
Hey I mean at least it wasnt powered by one of those engines that was just detonating nukes behind a spacecraft to accelerate it. But I wouldnt doubt it if that appears in this season, because apparently NASA has just been tripping on acid for the entire show.
ah yes, the Orion drive
You seem to be implying that NASA isn't tripping on acid under normal, IRL operations XD
@@playwars3037 More like NASA's manned section decided to go with Boeing as the "trusted" contractor, and making "cost saving" measures that sound like what a stoner would come up with.
Solid-core NTRs run at up to 3500 K (usually a few hundred K lower tho). About as hot (or lower) as good chemical engines. NTRs get much higher Isp because of the low molecular weight of the exhaust products (H2 compared to mostly H2O)
Yeah I didn't do a deep dive on why they're more efficient in an attempt to keep the video brief and accessible. I thought mentioning the higher exhaust velocity was enough detail to understand what I was talking about :)
I might do a much longer video all about nuclear propulsion at some point, this was really just a fun project testing the waters and seeing what people thought of me shifting over to this style of content.
If you're referring to the NERVA nuclear rockets, the operating temperature you quoted here is about 1000 K too high. They actually operate significantly cooler than any chemically fuelled rockets. But you're right about the specific impulse (and hence efficiency) being much higher because the exhaust is only hydrogen - which has a higher exhaust velocity compared to any other molecules precisely because it has the lightest possible weight.
Also, just a small point but the exhaust of a hydrolox engine is not mostly water. If it was, then the engine would be burning the hydrogen stoichiometrically, which would be far too hot for the combustion chamber and nozzle to handle without melting, even with regenerative cooling. Hydrolox engines are always run as fuel rich as possible, mainly for the same reason why hydrogen is the propellant of choice for nuclear engines - getting as much unburned hydrogen as possible into the exhaust brings the average molecular weight of the exhaust products down and hence boosts the specific impulse and efficiency. The bonus prize of this approach is that the combustion temperature is lower, so the parts of the rocket in contact with the burning fuel (nozzle, combustion chamber, preburners and turbopumps) are far less likely to melt.
@@lloydevans2900 Just the feasible maximum temp for a solid core, not nerva or anything specific
Neither the Challenger disaster nor the Columbia disaster could have happened on a Pathfinder-style shuttle. There are no SRBs, nor any falling debris to knock tiles off the shuttle.
That said though, we find out about the 1989 Pathfinder tragedy in the Season 2-3 news reels. The deadly shuttle accident in the FAM timeline is actually a depressurization in lunar orbit that kills all 5 crew members.
I would say that getting hit by space debris could knock off tiles from the shuttle as well
@@delfinenteddyson9865 I wouldn't say that's much of an issue. The likelyhood of getting hit by anything large enough to crack more than one tile, but not large enough to have disabled any other spacecraft it could've hit instead must be really really low
@@sebastiaomendonca1477 fair enough
Let's just all be happy that the real space shuttle wasn't nuclear powered...
The disasters that happened were already tragic enough, now imagine if you added nuclear fallout to the mix
The level the uranium is enriched to is also staggering and would probably make the fallout extra fun(-ish) to deal with.
It's pretty clear that the people who did the pathfinder model put a lot more thought into it than the writers; it shouldn't have fired up the NERVAs on separation, it should have used those massive jet engines the designers put on it (perhaps something like the RB545 or SABRE?) to get to LEO and only use the low-thrust NERVAs to do the translunar burn. I'm not sure if those upper engines are ever shown burning or even mentioned... It's kinda too bad; having both a nuclear engine and an 80s-era SSTO engine in one vehicle could have had much higher Cool value.
The show was never meant to be truly realistic. While it has some degree of realism, ever since the first season I've felt the writers usually go for drama and thrill and stuff rather than more realism. But if the show was more realistic, the accidental firing of J-2 in the season 1 finale wouldn't happen as well as just about everything during the last few episodes of season 2. I don't want to say the show is trash and if people enjoy it, good for them, but it's just too unrealistic for the sake of drama for me.
@@lipo8426 Yeah, I agree. But I keep watching it because there's not really much else out there, and the core premise of 'what if?' is sound. If it gets more people to nudge congress for more NASA funding...
@@oasntet That's fair point, NASA needs that public money afterall.
An NTR shuttle isnt only a terrible idea because of safety, but simply obtaining one with enough thrust at air launch altitude, would most likely outweigh the benefits of having an engine with ~800 isp (it would probably end ip weighing about 9 tonnes)
Thing is, this is the result of a NASA that didn't have its budgets cut in the 60's, and where research into nuclear engine tech was both allowed to proceed and indeed embraced, so most of the "that seems oddly powerful/Dangerous" stuff is explainable by "they managed to test for it and find solutions and spent more time actually testing different ideas for more powerful output than our timeline" of the shows premise.
I do agree, putting it on a shuttle is a bit odd, since originally the shuttles were supposed to be a supplement for a "Tug" that would fly constant Moon-Earth trajectories, and which was meant for cargo usage; NERVA would have been useful here due to the massively decreased fuel consumption once it was in orbit, and since NERVA's a nuclear Reactor, you can click it over to purely power generating once you have the orbits set up.
I'd imagine that Pathfinder was based off a shuttle because by this point they'd had a lot of time working on spaceplane designs, it was a known factor, and they could easily pull one in the factory aside and rework it to include the NERVA engine; why fix what isn't broken, after all
This style of video is fantastic! Looking forward to more :D From my understanding of rocket engines, which is not university level at all, Pathfinder's engine isn't very plausible to exist, right? Assuming Hydrogen as a fuel source, and given the size of the vehicle, the kind if engine you would need to produce enough thrust to have a TWR greater than 1 you'd need a hell of a lot more fuel than the Shuttle can carry! Might be wrong about it, like a more efficient way of storing it may play a part (or one hell of a good engine)
Yeah as mentioned in the video, the engine produces way more thrust than the real life NERVA should. Liquid or gas core nuclear engines might be capable of such high thrust though so I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt.
@@TheBeardyPenguin It's probably fair to assume that a gas-core NERVA powered space shuttle would have its own suite of reasons why it's an _awful_ idea, though.
@@TheBeardyPenguin either its a nuclear-lightbulb or there's core in the exhaust for those.
@@TheBeardyPenguin Would there even be enough lh2 on pathfinder to have the necessary Delta v to orbit?
@@TheBeardyPenguin NERVA thrust is a function of the density of the propellant, so there are ways to make even a solid core NTR high thrust, like using nice, dense water as a propellant, or adding LOX to the exhaust post-heating. This however drops the Isp, possibly to a point where it can't even compete with chemic rockets.
Arguably though, a spaceplane is probably the best place to use the already iffy concept of a solid NTR since it doesn't even require TWR > 1
Videos like these are awesome! I've seen videos like this before from other people, but none of them are explained or edited as nicely as this one! Great job!
More than that, as TD showed, it doesn't have enough delta-v as shown to get to earth orbit, let alone the moon
I am so excited for future videos of this new format!
Can't wait to see what you analyse next!
3:30 I've been told its the equivalent of a chest X-ray, so if you're overdue for a checkup...
THANK YOU!!! Been having the same concerns ever since I even heard about Pathfiner! Great seeing a video like this!
Love this video format. It’s a fresh new kind of content from you, you should do it more.
Even as a seasoned space nerd who knows about everytying you just said, this was really interesting
I really enjoy this new idea of video. I hope to see more!
Really good video but you got one thing wrong I have a video on this but I'll give you the gist nuclear rockets are colder than combustion ones the reason they're efficiency is higher is because of how light their gas is in this case hydrogen (specific gas energy = R constant ÷ molar weight of the gas or gases)
Now it's just simple division so our "R constant" is around 8400, and a nuclear rockets molar mass of hydrogen as a liquid is 2 kmol but in combustion you have oxygen and a fuel with much more hydrocarbons so it's like 40 kmol. The specific energy is how much that gas will speed up so like in the nerve a program the temperature of the would only get to 2200K, and a combustion reaction gets around 3600. There was a NASA program that was canceled called the timberwind program it called for first stage nuclear rockets with performance similar to combustion rockets, if you can Gap that 1000K of temperature difference nuclear rockets could have the same performance as combustion rockets and you kept the weight down of course. Yeah I thought nuclear rockets would be hotter than combustion but the limit is only how far we wish to push the temperature now hopefully we get a couple of real rockets cuz it changes the playing field entirely it doubles the performance that kind of change in the market would be insane quicker mission times more fuel to orbit which makes more launches more practical and just don't mess up I'm sure they could have made the engine detachable so that I could survive reentry and even the nerve a program with human rated ,so I think we're good give me nuclear.
If you made it this far don't search this up but what color do you think radiation is?
Uhh no I didn't make a mistake, at no point in the video did I say nuclear rocket engines are hotter than chemical rockets..
I know why they're more efficient and I touched upon that being due to the higher exhaust velocity. I'm literally doing a degree on this stuff. I didn't do a deep dive as I was trying to keep the video as surface level and accessible as possible.
@@TheBeardyPenguin I think I said that cause @1:30 "the nuclear rocket heats propellent to crazy hight temperatures." The Nerva program weak reactors got to 2200 Kelvin, compared to a chemical rocket at 3400K, the rest was me just explaining my self sorry, I remember a steam I think you said something about your aerospace degree or maybe that was N9, sorry blunder on my behalf.
@@lunavil yeah I'd call a few thousand Kelvin crazy high.. Again, didn't say it was hotter than the chemical one. I was just trying to get across that the heat comes from the reactor rather than combustion.
Still, thanks for the deep dive, anyone who wanted more detail would surely find it very interesting :)
not sure if anyone else mentioned it, but in the time between S2 and S3 a pathfinder shuttle had a catastrophic failure killing all crew (including USMC Lopez). leading to nasa shelving the things and using the older space shuttle until the 90s. Basically, Eds mission to confront Braun is the only mission of note and the only time the public trusted it to fly around earth. its hinted that engine assembly is done at Jamestown by the mid 90s
love this video, you did catch every aspect that needed to be pointed at (just found this channel btw)
In S03E04 they mention that both Sojourner and Mars-94 use liquid hydrogen as propellant.
Loved this video! Would be nice to get more like this!
Love the new video design. Definitely not as educated on rocket science to really comment on a lot of things, but it’s very fascinating and I greatly enjoyed it.
Would a video on theoretical rockets like fusion powered be on the docket for a video?
Glad you enjoyed! I'm already working on a video along those lines, so yes :)
I am excited to see more videos like this, space is cool as frik
I think what you'd want is some kind of system to guarantee recovery of the NTR reactor core so it can survive a crash-landing intact and be ejected from the vehicle and recovered from an aerodisintegration during reentry. Right, it doesn't necessarily need to actually work afterwards. It just needs most of the core to survive in one piece. I'm not sure if completely sealing off the core is viable since even shut down it might have the radioactivity to liquify itself without active cooling Though if it liquifies on the ground after reentry that does "contain" the meltdown to a limited area. I think you could definitely figure out a way to get this thing not to just splash radioactive fallout over a vast area.
Love this content beardy!
a British penguin is teaching me about things that fly
I'm learning and I'm loving it
Really liked this video. Not what I came here for but super interesting. Keep up the great work.
You say that dumping a bunch of radioactive materials over LA like it would be a bad thing lol
So my 8 nuclear jet engined ssto in my Interstellar Expanded save isn't exactly safe... Eh the kerbals are green already
Very awesome video! Super entertaining!
Yay Scott Manley 2.0
Except that Scott actually has good content and is a good person
Ok I understand why a nuclear rocket engine would be bad but what a bout a nuclear powered space station or ship simply powered by nuclear energy for the life supports and such if everything was controlled and there was a nuclear technician present what would be the problem then( also like your vids and this style is a real nice add on to all the other stuff you make)
It´s so sad watching such an amazing show fuck up like this and with Helium-3 mining...
Very nicely done! You brought up some really good points and I have to agree, pathfinder is really cool but it's not a good idea with the way its being used. Something I also thought about was the exhaust gasses. When they pass through the reactor I imagine the propellant would become radioactive so using a nuclear engine in the atmosphere like that would not only pose the risk of dispersing radioactive materials in the event of an accident, it would also spray a large area with radioactive exhaust. A more practical approach would be to launch the shuttle into space and then ignite the nuclear engine after it exits the atmosphere but even then it's still a pretty impractical and probably unsafe design
i almost watched the video before finishing the 2nd season of the series
Can we talk about the sheer genius of building an orbiter on the moon, flying it to Mars as a single-stage vehicle, and landing on Mars using rockets for braking and lift rather than, say, wings or a parachute
Fun fact in the extra content on apple tv pathfinder did actually have an accidient.
Great video and analysis, quite fun, although I'd like to add a few things:
1- Measuring Isp in seconds is an convention that was chosen because it gives the same number in metric and imperial. However it is a horrible convention that makes neither the numbers nor dimensions add up in metric (idk about freedom units, but not like that'd be out of the norm). You can't plug such value in the rocket equation without being overly careful with the units and you'd be quite surprised how many mistakes I've seen regarding that.
2- While the main point is right, you overstated the danger quite a bit, that satellite's reactor was live just before reentry and it had been used for quite a while, so it was full of fresh and screamingly radioactive fission products. With proper(ly expensive lol) handling procedures (like using fresh fuel after each launch and not turning the reactor on until danger has passed, not like it'll be of much use in ascent anyway), the potential pollution is orders of magnitude lower, quite possibly lower than that of RTGs (pros and cons, 238Pu is incredibly radioactive but an alpha emitter, and its a smaller package but one you can't really control).
Also that cleanup wasnt as expensive as it was made out to be by the commentary... Don't get me wrong, it's s bad idea, and hell no I'd not let a nuclear shuttle (not the death trap that was the Shuttle anyway!) fly over my general direction; but the issues are fixable, the profile and vehicle design could be altered and end up with a plan that's actually decent, quite good in the point of view of those in the show without our hindsight, and definitely not "god awful", at least not if we take it at a bit less than face value ;)
Edit after rewatch: the sievert is a unit of energy density, it is 1J/kg, applied to radiation. If you absorb 8Sv (which is 8J per kilo of body weight, say 600J for an average adult), you die ipso facto (altho a single Sv will cut your life short regardless of treatment). However, if a piece is emitting 5Sv/h, it means it is emitting 5J per kilo of piece per hour. Most of these pieces were pretty small, so they'd take way longer than 1.5h to give such dose, and you only take full dose if you eat it or something (and gammas and neutrons may still go mostly through), just holding it, specially with gloves isnt gonna get close to that figure.
Now you still wouldnt want to get close to that thing, but the way it was presented extremely overstates its danger, and specially with how much misinformation there is about radiation and its danger it should be taken with special care, specially since misjudging, even if overstating, a risk can be dangerous...
For the next one, if there is (I actually loved it despite my critizism, keep it up :D), a bit more of a careful, accurate commentary, possibly even going in more depth, would be nice to try not to give the wrong impression in favor of getting the point quicker ;)
Thanks for the deep dive! Agreed about the Isp convention, but as long as it is the convention that's the way I have to present it.
Pathfinder's reactor would be live during launch as it uses the NERVA to fly into orbit, but yeah I was just showcasing the worst case scenario.
The Kosmos fragment radiation reading was the dose absorbed by the detector on contact with it, it wasn't normalised by the mass of the fragment. So if you held that piece in your hand for a couple of hours you'd be dead. The main concern would be people not understanding the dangers and pocketing fragments as souvenirs, something that was a huge problem after the Columbia disaster. If you had that sat in your back pocket or displayed on your mantelpiece you'd be dead soon after.
Yeah the exact cost of the cleanup was hard to nail down, that was just the bill sent to the Soviet Union, though it did include projected future expenses too so agreed that it isn't entirely accurate.
Glad you enjoyed the video, I tried to keep it as surface level as possible and not go into too much detail to keep it short and accessible. My next video in this style will contain a lot more in depth maths though so look forward to that :)
@@TheBeardyPenguin I think the Isp convention is mostly problematic for education, it is not rare for people to explain or understand it as just a number, which is just sad... Idk, I'd have taken the chance to explain it in SI noting the convention as a quick asterisk. Specially since the note about using weight and not mass can raise a lot more questions than it answers...
About the reactor being live, if it has an O2 afterburner, which it'd have if they're smart as quadrupling TWR and cutting on gravity tax (also more given O2 is 16x denser and needs half the insulation) would definitely offset the halving of Isp, then it could have a dead reactor, as long as running the fuel doesnt suddently moderate enough to start it, which would be a worryingly low margin, you can just run the afterburner, and you would anyway because you'd use less of the annoying H2 while saving on engine weight and gravity tax.
That is what I'd assume anyway...
About Kosmos' radioactivity, then the point doesnt change that much, how much does a detector weigh? Because I doubt its calibrated for an equivallent human's exposure as that'd be incredibly variable and thus a bad metric, altho some are out there which try to convert... And I totally agree, even if the actual dose accounting for everything was somehow a thousand times lower you'd still be dizzy the next day, dont think it's that bad and by the time you go to the doctor have a slim chance with a certain cancer in this decade; but I feel this kind of infirmation, given the strongly politicized context, should be handled with care.
I didnt question the number tho, I honestly have no idea so I assumed was right thinking to maybe check out later if I remembered XD. The point was that a couple million canadian was most definitely less than the cost of that fuel, if it was fresh and actually usable ofc, lol (looking at centrifuge costs and doing engineer grade assumptions, I landed on a price for 90%235 of modern-US 2M/kg). In the video it was stated as something huge...
Haha, HYPE! I guess it'll be about a different topic, but after watching this video I'd love to have a serious, deep discussion about nuclear launch vehicles and their safety, of course done in a sensible way... Because you cant deny their potential ;)
And thanks for the reply haha
I loved the video can't wait to see more
Glad you’re still alive (:
really enjoyed this video
Listen I hear you, I get you. Counterpoint: it’s badass
😎
This was really interesting! While Pathfinder was cool, I'm curious how they would've even been able to reach such speeds.
I'm also curious as to how Pathfinder would handle aerodynamics and re-entry with those wingtip vertical stabilizers.
Look at the DreamChaser, it doesn't even have a vertical stabiliser or even true wings, but it should work.
@@lipo8426 I think Dream Chaser has a bigger wing root on it (relative to itself) and the wings have to lock themselves into place. Pathfinder's vertical stabilizers look like it has a lot thinner of a root and are attached at the top of the wings. At least to me, it seems like it would create a good amount of moment during re-entry or some high stress during supersonic or even hypersonic flight. They probably figured out a way to reinforce it, though.
The design was based off of the shuttle block 2 proposal that had vertical wing tips too (no NTRs though, they would just slap it onto a next-gen STS system). They probably did some aerodynamic wind tunnel testing or simulations.
2001:aso, orion I/III
NASA studies for the irl gen 2 shuttle showed the wing tip model was actually more efficient and aerodynamic. This would also allow the shuttles black reentry tiles to face outward, minimizing the risk of foam from the orange tank hitting them. This is what caused Columbia to burn up upon reentry.
I miss for all kerbalkind, what happend to that series, sorry in prehand if I missed you explenation before.
DUDE there's literally a pinned comment
@@TheBeardyPenguin yeah, as sayd, have not seen it
I think there are a kot of precautions taken preventing disaster due to nuclear material during a crash. Even if pathfinder blows up
As someone who HASEN'T watched the 3rd season, I really enjoyed this. thanks, Beardy! Cheers. :)
You need to watch it
Also I don't think you can put enough lh2 in such a small space and reach orbit.
Considering the low density of LH2, you're almost certainly right.
same goes for their LH2 powered LSAM
Cool videoso, a lot of information in just a few minutes
Missed opportunity to draw Olaf with an actual hammer hand
Luckily there has been a lot of work developing Nuclear fuels that do not easily release their radioactivity into the environment. Cosmos had an incredibly dirty reactor compared to what is being proposed for Nuclear Thermal Rockets today.
I like this new style of content
To call it a space shuttle on steroids is an understatement but that’s the problem with “For All Mankind” it jumped the shark too much.
So, now you're going to build one in For All Kerbal Kind, right? 😁
Perhaps ;)
0:17
The main one is Congress gets drunk and *adds a zero to NASA’s budget*
The biggest problem with nuclear assist rocket is it can't be turn off. There need to be a way to turn off the engine.
Whose ranium?
Thanks, Opus...
Make that two zeros since everything here would cost well above 10 million per launch.
Watching this just makes me want to make one in KSP now. :3
Some issues with this video. The main thing is that a space shuttle using an NTR would not magically be radioactive the instant it launches unless it uses said NTR to launch. A nuclear reactor only becomes highly radioactive after it is started and fission products start to build up on the core, so even if you took a nuclear powered shuttle with that much enriched uranium and blew it up with explosives mid air much like challenger did while making sure the fuel was hit then you would get the ceramic fuel to fragment and rain down enriched uranium, which is not actually very radioactive to the point where it is literally safe to touch with your bare hands. The problem comes from ingestion or inhalation, something which is prevented via what I mentioned, the fuel is stored as a ceramic, which cracks when damaged, meaning the heavy pieces just rain down and settle down over the ocean without a single fission product to speak of and hence no high radiation to speak of. The fuel also would probably be extremely well protected, and if you have seen footage of challenger you can see massive fragments of the shuttle survive intact, including the entire crew section. In the case of columbia entire power heads of the engines survive the re entry. Though here there is indeed an issue since the NTR was already started, and hence it now contains fission products, which can be a big problem much like in Kosmos. So if you are using an NTR and start it over the ocean and then just keep it running there, even if it blows then the core fragments will go into the ocean and sink to the bottom due to the weight, much like when it has happened with soviet nuclear submarines, down there the water will act as a shield for the radiation, but still not exactly a good thing for the local life near the fragments.
Interesting points, but as mentioned in the video Pathfinder fires up its engine while flying over populated areas. That means the reactor is active and a lot of people could have a very bad day if something went wrong.
My field is rocket engines, not nuclear reactors though. I didn't know a lot of that, so cheers! :)
@@TheBeardyPenguin the reactor still has less radiation even then, since fission products barely started to form. Still, flying over a populated area is a very stupid idea
I'm not sure if I have gotten this right because I'm not very smart but if the point of a nuclear rocket engine is heat energy wouldn't electricity be able to do the same thing?
Yes, but where are you going to get that much electricity from aboard a spacecraft? The lightest, most energy-dense way to generate that much heat with our current technology is a nuclear reactor.
@@TheBeardyPenguin that makes sense :) do you think we would be able to produce and harvest that amount of electricity from space in the future? I feel like that would be an amazing opportunity to be able to explore our solar system
i think for the future, the video is more attractive to new viewers/non subscribers if the penguin drawing isnt in it. 👍
so why didn't the pathfinder have two drives? one for orbit and one for atmo?
The model they used for the shots actually does, the writers just didn't think to use the atmo-appropriate engines at launch. But it also needs drop tanks to get from the C5 to orbit; air launches are cool, but they're not _that_ cool.
@@oasntet ah that makes more sense
Actually pathfinder is its own class of shuttles (they said in the time skip for s3)
0:19 are you SURE that is just ONE 0?
My criticism of Pathfinder is more about it being a nuclear-powered single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (the airliner doesn't add enough velocity to count as a stage imho), which I find unrealistic.
It's a terrible idea because it's an ass-heavy airplane. A nose heavy plane flies poorly, a tail heavy plane flies once!
Sheesh - I've only seen the first season of FAM. Nuclear-powered AND air-launched space shuttle? Damn, tat's so silly it'd break suspension of disbeief for me. I'm only a new subscriber (after coming across the "For All Kerbalkind" videos - which are excellent!) , but I would like to add to the earlier comments tat I would love to see more videos on spaceflight topics. I'm particularly curious as to how much impact rotating detonation engines might have on things - I know theyre said to be about 25% more efficient than conventional chemical rockets in theory, due to, well, detonation rather than deflagration being involved, but are there likely to be side effects that could reduce that in practice (vibration, noise, something else)?
Anyway, IMO in FAM, they'd have been better to go with a linear aerospike engine - far more credible!
Just go with “rule of cool” and stop worrying so much about realism.
First to see you back!
Great fukin series I got it on Blu Ray and I'm into 3rd season now 4 th season on the way, it's a brilliant show
Well I think that in episode one of the third season one of the characters hints at first generation shuttles still flying as of 1992. It wouldn't make sense to have both first and second generations operate simultaneously. So maybe the second generation isn't as good as proclamed in season 2. But yeah it might be just the show not carrying for contynuity and accuracy (there is a lot of it). Looking forward to more videos of this type in the future Beardy.
Glad you enjoyed the video! In the extra content on AppleTV+ there's a news report about a second generation shuttle having an accident that killed its entire crew, so while they investigate that they're still using the first generation ones.
@@TheBeardyPenguin that explains a lot
Me (I play ksp):Yes yes... bad idea...
How would the nuclear core be cooled? The proposed real life nuclear space tugs have giant radiators.
the original plan for the shuttle was to use it in conjunction with a nuclear tug that stays in orbit and takes payloads or crew to the moon
...yes that's exactly what I said in the video
Yep.
People do realize right that if we ever want to get anywhere in space we need to break the taboo on nuclear power.
I agree, but it's not just taboo in this case, it's a genuine danger. A nuclear reactor is a hell of a lot less dangerous than an exploded nuclear rocket.
Pah! Nuclear salt water engine!
thanks olaf :)
I like this type of video. 😄
Thanks Olaf
Good luck maneuvering the nuclear space shuttle with low TWR.
Pebble-bed reactors might take care of that.
Pathfinder is still not too bad of an idea even if it seem so here's the thing it makes sense to wanna make something like this in the first place also you have to understand nuclear propulsion engine is going to be tested by NASA and darpa by 2027
The second season of this show was absolutely awful. The nuclear shuttle is not even in my top 10 of problems in this season.
Insane contrast with S1.
🤓🤓🤓
woah, aurora4x music
Why are you saying the Pathfinder nuclear shuttle is a bad idea
Eh, whatever.
Radiation is the spice of life.
Too much math brain hurts.
Goodday
beardy I was in london on a school field trip and I got robbed, there were a lot of homeless people, a homeless lady danced half-naked at a intersection, and pizza hut tasted like garbage, I intend to blame all of this in you, because british, ok?
For all mankind: NERVA is a bad
YT creators: NERVA is bad
Actual NASA and not a TV show: Yeah sure
Beardy isn't saying NERVA is bad, he's saying putting it on a shuttle is bad.
A point in favour of nuclear shuttles. While pretty dangerous, it makes more sense than virtually any other application of nuclear technology to space flight because a large winged shuttle is designed to be able to come back intact. So a shuttle should be able to abort to ground safely in circumstances where any conventional rocket would need to be blown up by the range safety guys.
I RP KSP with a lot of failure mods, and I had to establish a rule that nuclear technology (which is basically necessary for beyond Mars) HAD to be transported on inherently safer shuttles after a couple of big accidents. We shouldn’t let the fact that STS was badly designed distract from being aware of the advantages/disadvantages of the type of spacecraft.
the better option is to just use your nuclear engine outside of earth atmosphere. That way you maximize lifespan because it doesn't have to go back down to earth while minimizing danger.
@@maskie4189 How does that help with range safety? We’re still bringing nuclear materials through an atmosphere. If a normal rocket experiences any kind of abort, those materials are going to be scattered all over the place.
@@joshuabanner3675 Well the idea is you only bring up the nuclear fuel through the atmosphere once, and you bring up the booster and fuel without running the nuclear engine to minimize risk. At that point you can run your nuclear engine wherever you want in space without nearly as much risk, and you never have to bring it back down to earth at all. Alternatively you could just transport up in pieces a conventional reactor, with low enriched fuel instead of high enriched fuel, which is a lot safer, and use it to run and ion drive.
Oh I think I see. I guess you’re talking about in reality, right? I was more in the mindset of the video game, which has very different rules (specifically a much higher rate of part failure for gameplay reasons).
Thinking about it, they send nuclear materials into space on rockets all the time don’t they?
@@joshuabanner3675 Yeah, mostly for RTG's though, and they aren't super dangerous, because the failure rate on them is really low. You're still gonna have a huge problem if your rocket explodes in atmosphere though.
It’s good
perhaps they used a nuclear fusion engine
Saying that something is a bad idea, simply because it’s too dangerous is not very optimistic.
Ever heard of Murphy's law? Inevitable outcomes don't care if you're optimistic or not. They're still inevitable
go talk to the kerbals who are totally ok with radioactive rocket stages being ditched into their ocean and over their cities