Recent content by vemvare

So, they know what "meat" is, but not animals? Where did they encounter meat without it being part of an animal?This makes no sense.

I think we're talking in different directions here; a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) is not the same thing as a nuclear-electric propulsion (NE) system. Considering the dangers involved in using an NTR to ferry something to orbit, adding the fact that acceleration is much less important than...

The "space reactor" you are referring to is a nuclear thermal rocket. Basically, a nuclear reaction heats ceramic fuel, which in turn heats hydrogen which is then expelled to create thrust. Considering design choices, two major differences between this and any other nuclear reactor is it is used...

If off-world colonies exists, either with or without FTL, a cult-like movement could easily move somewhere and become a state. Instead of trying to alter the behavior/traditions/values of a larger group of diverse people, the "right" people could be hand-picked.

It could be a good thing, a lot of sci-fi cultures have that shallow/superficial feel to them, and being inspired by an existing/historical culture might help in developing something that feels more solid. Provided of course that an effort is made to understand how the people of that culture...

They changed the design parameters from 600 to 2400MWth, the graph on page 21 on the second document is particularly interesting. Miniaturizing a gas-cooled fast design might be impractical, or at least it'd be dangerous since the volumetric power density increases with smaller sizes. Also...

Having read up a little, in Na-cooled fast reactors voiding leads to an increase in power, a.k.a a positive void coefficient. Lead,or LBE on the other hand boils at a much higher temperature but has the disdvantage of attacking/dissolving structural materials. Molten salts seem interesting, but...

Thanks for the great replies! One thing I wonder about is how the Integral Fast Reactor were supposed to work .If I've understood it correctly, one of the points of re-processing the metallic fuel used in the EBR II is to mix in "fresh" Pu from the blanket into the reprocessed (fission products...

Imagine if we had a plutonium economy, where nuclear reactors breeding 239-Pu from 238-U and burning it were the standard in large-scale grid power production. Could this readily available reactor grade plutonium be used in compact reactors for ships, et cetera? Can small reactors of perhaps...

You want the compound to crystallize (=precipitate) slowly so that it forms big, pure crystals. You wanty the solubility of the compound to decrease gradually. "Crashing" the compound out of the solution by adding the second solvent all in one go achieves the opposite of this.

That is one of the main factors raising my "ridiculometer" when it comes to SF. The lone scientist/team of scientists always saving the day is so distant from how history has worked so far that it doesn't even vaguely look like a continuation of it. If the characters come across an aggressive...

Isn't there a significant risk of blooming if one tries to pulse the beam?

The poster just prior to me is corrent, though I'd like to point out how much easier things are if you stick to non-hobbit units of measurment :)

H2S, NOx and N2O are all unstable and would either react with water, oxygen or be quickly destroyed by UV-light if the concentrations were higher. Alien biospheres would have to be poisonous in other ways, perhaps ODAP and/or BMAA are perfectly normal or even essential amino acids for the alien...

Chlorine in fact has a lower electronegativity than oxygen, though reactivity depends mainly on the enthalpies of the compounds that can be formed. The main problem is that it is rare, so chlorine atmospheres would basically never form naturally anywhere. It also reacts with water, forming...