From JoNova

By Jo Nova

The Space Race is back

Australia couldn’t build a nuclear plant “til 2045”, but NASA is going to put one on the moon in five years time.

The new NASA chief, Sean Duffy, is set to announce urgent plans to get a very small nuclear reactor on the moon. What was going to be a 40MW microreactor in the “early 2030s” is now said to be a 100MW one launched in 2029. The reason for the rush is because three months ago China and Russia  announced plans to cooperate and build their own nuclear plant on the moon in the early 2030s. They want the power to set up what they call an international lunar base. According to Politico, the fear is that the first nation to colonize the moon could declare a “keep out zone” — a quasi form of ownership that would stop another nation setting up in the same area.

Space race: US aims to beat out China and Russia with nuclear reactor on the Moon

By:Sébastian SEIBT , France 24

NASA’s interim chief Sean Duffy has made deploying a nuclear reactor on the Moon his top priority, framing the effort as a “second space race”.

Solar power isn’t much use on the moon where each night lasts two weeks. The back-up battery payload would be enormous (and who wants to be in a moon colony when a big battery catches fire?) Nuclear power is the only thing that makes sense.

“We need a lot of energy for future missions to the Moon,” said Simon Middleburgh of the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University in Wales. “To establish permanent Moon bases, we would need to be generating our own water and oxygen.”

Nuclear power, by contrast, offers an advantage in energy density. “It’s very dense, which means that a reactor the size of a small car could theoretically power a lunar base for around six years without refuelling,” Middleburgh said.

Transporting a scaled-down reactor is not the same as launching a nuclear power plant into orbit, but it is still likely to be an expensive operation. For one, it’s unclear how many microreactors will be needed. While a single unit might suffice, backup reactors would be essential in case of failure. Experts told FRANCE 24 said it was impossible to imagine a lunar base without an alternative power source if the lights were to go out. All in all, launching and installing the reactors could cost several billion dollars, factoring in both manufacturing and delivery.

Meanwhile in Australia our “most advanced” science bureau, the CSIRO, says nuclear power will take years to build and cost too much to use in Australia even though we have the largest uranium reserves in the world. Apparently, NASA can put a reactor on the moon, but CSIRO says small modular reactors are “too immature” for us. While the CSIRO waits for the rest of the world to master nuclear power and sell it back to us, it keeps us firmly locked in an era of windmills.

Australia has more space for launchpads close to the equator than any first-world nation. That makes us ideal as a launch pad for satellites. It’s an industry we could have had. Thankfully, given the spectacular government failure, one small company in Australia is trying to catch us up. The first rocket launch in fifty years in Australia was a week ago. It only lasted 14 seconds, but Gilmour Space are ambitious and serious. For some reason the ABC didn’t mention this on the nightly news, preferring to repeat the same stories on foreign wars and e-scooter accidents it ran the day before instead. Presumably they didn’t want to show a small private company being innovative and scientific because it makes the billion dollar Blob agencies look bad. And there’s always the horrible risk that if they turn a bunch of engineers into stars, they might say things like Elon Musk.

David Maddison comments about how Australia has been missing opportunities for 50 years:

Of course, all Australian efforts to get into space are reminiscent of when Australia first launched its own satellite in 1967 on a surplus US Army Redstone first stage which the US donated after they had done testing in Australia.

The Americans were prepared to donate more of the rockets as they didn’t want to return them to America but the Minister for Education and Science and also later PM Gorton at the time, could see no future in Australia being involved in space and rejected a proposal for a low-cost space program along the lines of WRESAT. The cluelessness was staggering. Australia’s fledgling space program more or less languished after that.

Australia was the third country to design and launch a satellite from its own soil and one of only six other countries to have launched a satellite at the time along with USSR (1957), United States (1958), United Kingdom (1962). Canada (1962), Italy (1964) and France (1965).

I wrote an article about WRESAT.

Yet another lost opportunity by Australia due to second or lower rate politicians and the senior public serpents who tell them what to think.

Instead of being the worlds launchpad in the space race, or leaders in nuclear energy, the Labor Government plans to spend $22 billion dollars on a Future Made in Australia that no one wants to buy anymore.

PS: Some interesting details in this video about what the Gilmour launch did well, and theories of what might have gone wrong:

h/t  James Murphy on Gilmour Space