Ares: We've Been Here Before

The Ares 1-X: We’ve Been Here Before

While an interesting development, other than the onboard computing capacity, the Ares 1-X is not much more technologically advanced than the liquid hydrogen- and oxygen-fueled rockets of the 1960s and in many ways it is not as advanced as the Saturn V, which took men to the Moon and back. It does not represent much more than a series of minor improvements over existing rocket designs. Chemical rockets such as the Ares 1-X, using liquid hydrogen and oxygen are limited in their efficiency and design by physics and while there are a few things that can be improved, such as stronger and lighter hull materials, better computers and guidance systems, the propellant system sorely limits what such rockets are able to do. The energy to do more simply isn’t available from chemical combustion.

Used in monstrously-expensive, heroic efforts, chemical rockets can get man to the Moon. We saw that with Apollo. That is effectively the limit to their capability, which is amazing when you think about it. Combustion— fire, if you will, able to get man to the Moon and back. Chemical rockets like the Ares 1-X cannot get man to Mars and return him safely. The three-year total trip time, while it might be survivable— the longest period in orbit is half that and the cosmonaut was near death from atrophy— even after a month or two in a weightless condition (frequently called microgravity), there are tremendous changes to the body, with muscular and bone deterioration starting immediately. Astronauts would not have the physical health and strength to what needed to be done upon reaching Mars after more than a year in weightlessness. Even upon return to normal gravity, physical therapy cannot restore all of the damage caused. What NASA continues to advocate for Mars is not practical with chemical rockets. While some would volunteer for a suicide mission for the chance to go to Mars, it’s not a moral thing to do.

From the 1960s to 1986, research was carried out on nuclear-powered engine systems. These were tiny compared to current chemical engines and even in the late 1960s, fission engines could be made to fire for more than an hour at a time. From 1978 to 1986, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory experimented with a more advanced type of nuclear engine that used a gas core, producing prototypes that used mercury and were working on models using clean argon when Congress killed the idea of all nuclear reactors in space. Nuclear technology was shelved. By doing so, Congress eliminated any chance of going further than the Moon by man.

Even a small nuclear reactor, such as those that have been used in submarines since the 1960s, would suffice for producing steady thrust that could take us to Mars by heating a gas directly and expelling it. A half-g of acceleration constantly applied over half the distance to Mars and then the same in reverse for the rest of the distance, decelerating at a half-g, would bring a small spaceship to Mars in four to five days, depending upon Mars’ distance from us when the trip began. There would be risks, as in all space travel, and problems, such as protecting the crew and ship from small rocks and objects that might be in the flight path. In one book I proposed a flight of 1 million miles “above” the orbital plane to eliminate most the chance of striking an object larger than solar wind particles and the use of magnetic fields (such as exist today) to deflect the solar wind. There are no doubt many other possible solutions.

To put this in perspective: it costs more than $1 billion for each flight of the Space Shuttle. An entire nuclear submarine like the Seawolf costs less to manufacture and put to sea than one Space Shuttle flight. Refining billions of pounds of hydrogen and oxygen is expensive. A nuclear system would be far less expensive. Several trips to space could be made for the price of one trip now, particularly if a horizontal takeoff and landing configuration is used, instead of the vertical method of launch typically used.

A nuclear system would be safer: the Shuttle launch pad is evacuated at every launch due to the potential for the fuel to explode with force of a small atomic bomb. How many accidents have small reactors on subs had in almost sixty years? None. The worst that can happen with a submarine-sized reactor is a very small area of contamination, which is much more easily cleaned up. The science fiction and econazi idea of any sort of problem magically arising from five hundred pounds of nuclear material burning up in the atmosphere, spread out over tens of thousands of miles, is one that is not supported by any reality. Where do such think that the nuclear materials used in reactors came from to start with, for example? Current theory holds that they were refined from natural sources that arrived from supernovae. Unlike many chemical agents, radioisotopes require a high concentration to cause any sort of harm from radiation. It’s like the lie of the “dirty bomb”. Once a small amount of radioisotopes are dispersed in an explosion, there is no potential for harm from the isotopes that are usually touted as being used in terror devices— except the misinformation that causes people to do self-destructive things as a result, such as a panic where people trample each other, crash cars, etc..

One of these mornings in the not-to-distant future, Americans are going to be surprised to hear on their radios, see on the TV or read in the newspaper that China or Russia has a nuclear-powered spacecraft in trials and they are planning to go to Mars with it.

Then the public is going to wonder: how did they beat us to it?

They didn’t. No government in the West was interested in continuing the manned portion of the Space Program beyond Earth orbit since 1972. No one gets “beaten” to a place when no effort was made to get there.