Nuclear power helps spacecraft work far from the Sun

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 15:44

   Also, why is nuclear power so important in space for propulsion or other use cases? Yeah, I mean, we talked before, like, it's very important to get NASA doing things that no one else is doing from a recruiting retention problem. Like if we, we already cracked the code. chemical propulsion. The more time and energy we spend doing that, the more disadvantaged we are because we don't have the stock options and you can go to other companies that are doing cool things. Nuclear power in space, it's very analogous to the nuclear submarine. I mean, you can go really, really far. And when you get there, you have a lot of power to do amazing things. We're sending that nuclear powered octocopter to Saturn's moon of Titan to look for complex chemistry. To maybe answer the question, are we even alone in our own solar

2. 16:24

   system, it's a two kilowatt MMRTG that converts to 100 watts. So like an old light bulb. So that's what we're able to send far out into the solar system, because once you get about to like Jupiter distance, solar effectiveness is like near zero. It's just like a flashlight and the beam just keeps going farther and farther out to the side. So you see very little when you finally get there. So nuclear power, again, helps us overcome some of the tyranny of distance in our solar system.

3. 16:50

   Yeah. Why is it important for NASA to exist at all? And, you know, we spend like 24 billion a year on NASA. Nowhere near like peak government spending on NASA in the 60s, but still some would say like just let the private sector do it. Oh, I mean, think about all the things that we set out and do and what benefit we get back here on Earth for it. Like nobody could have possibly imagined during the Apollo era, right, when we put Neil and Buzz on the moon, all of the downstream benefits. Again, we have weather satellites to predict the weather, to prepare for natural disasters, to see a forest fire somewhere. I mean, the damage is billions every time you have out-of-control wildfires, not to mention the loss of life, and we can see that.

4. 17:26

   And now we're actually queuing up drones to go and fight the fire before anyone even really knows it exists because we can see the heat blooms from space. You're connecting the disconnected through things like Starlink, which again does, I think, solve a lot of the world's problems. There are a lot of downstream benefits, not to mention the national security implications that protect our nation and people from space. Now apply that to the present day. What are we doing? We're going to the moon, we're building a moon base. All of the technology that's going to be required to do that has benefit back here on Earth. It has its scientific potential, unlocking the secrets of the universe, but then inspiring the next generation. You both said you wanted to be an astronaut as a kid right now. How many more kids are going to dress up as astronauts for Halloween

5. 18:08

   this year because of the Artemis II mission? How many more will do it when you see NASA astronauts back on the moon again? There is always some price worth paying. And frankly, the price we are paying is really, really small in comparison to all the benefit we get back here on Earth. Totally.