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China Ponders Nuclear-Powered 2030 Mission To Neptune (theregister.com) 53

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Scientists at top universities in China propose sending a spacecraft powered by nuclear fission to orbit Neptune -- the outermost planet in our solar system -- in 2030. Astronomers have not yet been able to look at Uranus and Neptune in much detail. The best data collected so far comes from NASA's Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to have flown by the big blue orbs way back in 1986 and 1989. [...] The challenges involved are considerable. The outer solar system is cold, dark, and cruel. Spacecraft flying far from the Sun cannot rely on solar power, and need other sources of energy to maintain steady orbits and keep their instruments from freezing.

The Chinese authors envisioned a spacecraft with a mass up to 3,000 kilograms powered by a nuclear fission reactor at one end. It would also carry four smaller satellites -- two to study Neptune's atmosphere and another two to probe Triton, its largest moon, The Planetary Society first reported. Triton is an odd object -- it orbits in the opposite direction to its host planet, is geologically active, and may harbor liquid oceans beneath its icy crust. The best time to launch such a spacecraft would be 2030, the scientists reckoned. It could fly aboard China National Space Administration's Long March 5 rocket, and would reach Neptune a decade later after flying by the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

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China Ponders Nuclear-Powered 2030 Mission To Neptune

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  • The reason (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    China Ponders Nuclear-Powered 2030 Mission To Neptune

    Must be a giant jar of honey there

  • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @08:25AM (#62662038) Homepage
    That actually sounds like a very valuable science mission. I hope it goes ahead.
  • Whiff (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @08:30AM (#62662046)
    The poster missed the opportunity to have the article title as:

    China plans to send probe to Uranus.

  • China is moving fast and this a bold goal, to have a working space based fission reactor ready for a mission in 8 years?

    If they even work off a successful prototype demo in that timeframe it'll be a bit of a black eye for NASA who has been talking about and working on space fission for decades now.

    Maybe this really is the start of a new space race, who can confirm the presence of life at any time in our solar system first...

    • They are going to have a unmanned fission reactor under 3000kg, that can fit in a March-5 rocket? Who will they steal that from?
      • Exactly, this is very ambitious and it's not like the US or the Russians have this tech just sitting around and they are catching up, this would be a leapfrog over every other space agency.

        I think small fission reactors are key to future space exploration so I hope this kicks the idea into high gear.

      • by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Probably just use all the Chinese students who otherwise would have gone to US for grad school and ended up working for NASA. With an exciting program at home they may just stay in China and build for China what they would have built for NASA.
      • by vivian ( 156520 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @09:17AM (#62662156)

        In the 1950's everyone knew that Japan made crap stuff and could only copy quality American products.
        By the mid 1980's that had reversed so drastically it was even a punchline in a quite popular movie that Japan makes all the best stuff.
        After living in Japan myself in the 90's, I saw first hand how so many advanced products there just simply were never exported - for example a top of the line duty free video camera in the airport in Aus was barely midrange in comparison to the stuff available in Akihabara.

        You think China can't innovate and produce quality goods? We only see the crap stuff because that's what we want to buy - cheap knockoffs at the lowest possible price.

        Don't make the mistake of thinking everything in China is like that though, and that innovation isn't possible there.
        As to the mission - I hope they succeed - and that it also inspires other countries to expand their own space exploration efforts. Better that than spending our ingenuity, effort and resources on war.

        • You think China can't innovate and produce quality goods? We only see the crap stuff because that's what we want to buy - cheap knockoffs at the lowest possible price.

          So is there any evidence that China is making better stuff and keeping it at home?

          • Not yet - their consumers are very poor. Their country is full of people who want their electronics to be even worse than what we get because they want more things rather than a few higher quality things. I don't know that China is really on a track to have a consumer spending class of their own or if they're even interested in shifting in that direction.

            But let's be clear - Americans want junk products and drive quality products out of the market due to price. I hate it. It's hard to even buy a manual

              • That is made less than 30 miles from where I live. It looks pretty clunky compared to the brushed stainless one that I have now. I bought it more than 10 years ago after going through two electric can openers in just a few years. I no longer own an electric because they all seem to be junk. After so many years of use, though, the rivet in the hinge is stretching out and it doesn't grip the can like it used to.

                Seems that Amazon might have dupes or the company has quality control issues lately. So I won'

                • Fair enough, I've had mine for about 10 years now - it has some light corrosion around the gear after being run through the dishwasher (don't do that), other than that it works like a charm. Nothing will beat the P-38's I used to get from my Military relatives though.
        • In the 1950's everyone knew that Japan made crap stuff and could only copy quality American products. By the mid 1980's that had reversed so drastically it was even a punchline in a quite popular movie that Japan makes all the best stuff.

          https://global.canon/en/mfg/s-... [global.canon]

        • Make no mistake: the stuff made in 1950's Japan WAS crap. Their leap to being the premier manufacturer of high quality goods didn't happen at all until the '70s. So maybe China can make high quality happen, maybe it can't. Given their culture* I doubt it. But either way you can't say Japan did it, therefore China has already done it. Japan's leap was extraordinary and would be hard for any country to emulate.

          >You think China can't innovate and produce quality goods?

          I do, and I'm confident in that posi
        • One major premise you are making is that Japan and China are alike. China has more resources and people than Japan but is culturally very different. Politically and economically there are major differences too. China has more potential but at the same time can be hindered by a government that could change its mind.
          • One major premise you are making is that Japan and China are alike.

            There is a more general point, though. Leading countries can be quite bad at anticipating that they will be overtaken in the future. Leading companies too. [newyorker.com]

      • Does it have to be a "reactor" as such? I thought that some ideas for nuclear propulsion basically amounted to "pump propellant through something really hot". If that's the case you only need a nuclear pile that's just a hair's breadth away from melting.

        Failing that, this could be China's Apollo Project, whereby working hard to achieve a single endeavour in space ends up producing many useful breakthroughs that can benefit us on Earth.

        • Fissile material is heavy but it's very energy dense. I'm sure the bulk of the weight of any reactor would be shielding. If China simply didn't care about shielding it, because it will be in space, that will lower the weight drastically. But the rocket could be off during launch and only engage at separation from the shielded launch rocket. I'm not sure how much difference a lack of shielding would make, though.

          • Fissile material is heavy but it's very energy dense. I'm sure the bulk of the weight of any reactor would be shielding. If China simply didn't care about shielding it, because it will be in space, that will lower the weight drastically. But the rocket could be off during launch and only engage at separation from the shielded launch rocket. I'm not sure how much difference a lack of shielding would make, though.

            Good point. After the launch, there wouldn't need to be shielding to protect humans. However, the electronics would still need to be protected.

        • Does it have to be a "reactor" as such? I thought that some ideas for nuclear propulsion basically amounted to "pump propellant through something really hot". If that's the case you only need a nuclear pile that's just a hair's breadth away from melting.

          This is a really odd post. For a brief period, perhaps ten years after the Second World War, the use of the term "pile" was common for fission reactors - because all but a couple of small lab reactors built to date were made of piles of graphite blocks. But after that period very few reactors were built of piles of graphite blocks, and the term entirely disappeared from use and I haven't seen the term used in anything written after the early 1960s (unless it was historical) - until your post.

          "Piles" were a

          • It wasn't the first word that came to mind, but I wanted to make it clear that I was referring to a big lump of fissile material with a hole running through it rather than that plus an assembly of pumps, shielding, control rods etc., which is what I think of when I see "reactor". If there's a more accurate term than I'm happy to be corrected. Of course depending on the fuel used there could well be a need for all that complicated stuff.
      • They don't have to steal that, they were the first in the world to figure out gunpowder and fireworks, and they have a very capable industrie. They do not steal everything like some people seem to think, and the US is just as good at stealing stuff from others.
    • Does it have to be a "reactor" as such? I thought that some ideas for nuclear propulsion basically amounted to "pump reaction mass through something really hot". If that's the case you only need a nuclear pile that's just a hair's breadth away from melting.

      Failing that, this could be China's Apollo Project, whereby working hard to achieve a single endeavour in space ends up producing many useful breakthroughs that can benefit us on Earth.

      If there is life on Neptune (or Triton) I wouldn't be surprised if it

      • I don't think this is necessarily for a nuclear rocket but more like the NASA Kilopower project, issue is you need to radiatively cool everything but having like 1KW+ available in orbit just opens a lot of doors.

        I think life in Triton is surmised to be similar to Europa, big underground oceans.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, having enough money for the project would make a lot of difference. That's how the US got to the Moon in ten years with 1960s technology, but the Constellation program failed with 2004 technology.

      Tightening a project's budget doesn't *always* make it more financially efficient. Once you cut a project's budget to the point where it can't make progress, that spending becomes *pure* waste. As it approaches that limit, the project will still pass milestones but never really get closer to its goals.

      Ch

      • Rosetta and other ESA-led science notwithstanding, you simply take it for granted that when a news story flashes around the world with stunning new images of deep space or important solar system objects, it comes from an American mission. The collective psychological impact of these stories is not to be underestimated. China being the focus of a story like that, especially with a technology the US has been talking about for decades but not delivering on, would be a huge boost to China's efforts to equal the US in international prestige.

        I've always dismissed the psychological impact because any time you hear non-Americans talk about American accomplishments in space, they say "we" in their commentary. NASA's policy of data sharing is so good, and their "for all mankind" publicity so pervasive, that it really does seem like most of the world feels like they're being brought along for the ride. NASA has been running more collaborative missions, including the Webb telescope, so other countries actually are being brought along for the ride n

    • Well, China has been probing their own citizens for years now so probing Uranus shouldn't be too much of a stretch.
    • If they even work off a successful prototype demo in that timeframe it'll be a bit of a black eye for NASA who has been talking about and working on space fission for decades now.

      Certainly we should wish any scientific space mission good luck.

      But no reason to think this would be a "black eye" for NASA. NASA has a space fission reactor prototype operating right now [sciencealert.com]. And the have successfully developed space reactor systems in the past, though they did not get deployed. It comes down to what gets funded to be flown, and the priorities for specific missions.

      • I mean if China has a working reactor model flying successfully on a mission to Neptune by 2030 and NASA is still in demonstration mode I would consider that something of a black eye. It's not NASA's fault persay, as you said they can only do what they are funded to do but it shows a big flaw in that model and we should reconsider how NASA decides it's mission scopes.

        I don't think that's likely, I think reactors in space is a hard problem but one worth solving.

    • If they even work off a successful prototype demo in that timeframe it'll be a bit of a black eye for NASA who has been talking about and working on space fission for decades now.

      Why? This assumes there is a loser and a winner in every situation. Most everything developed for space missions is at the cutting edge. Every success or failure is a learning opportunity.

      This also assumes that every mission's requirements are the same. For example, the first Mars rovers used solar panels mainly because the power requirements were lower and the required mission durations were measured in months. Also no one had any much experience in years long missions on the Mars surface. The current rove

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      NASA launched a fission reactor into orbit in 1965. The Russians launched a whole series of them.

    • eh, USA had first fission reactor in space in 1965, SNAP-10A

      • Not since though and it was a demo and I am not sure 43 days is really a success either. Big difference maker is operating one reliable and thorough enough that we can rely on it's operation for 2 decades to get out to Neptune and do years worth of science.

        I don't think China will have it done by 2030 but why take the chance, I hope this gets NASA some funding and drive to get their units up and going.

  • Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.
  • by Klaxton ( 609696 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @09:31AM (#62662198)

    I propose all kinds of things that aren't feasible to implement for a variety of reasons but they never get reported in the news. Unfair!

    • Fission reactor in space is very feasible and already been done, ya know. There are more than 30 of them up there.

      • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

        Yes, I read the article which specifically said "Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have been employed on more than 30 missions". They don't generate anywhere near 10kWe.

        • No, not talking about RTG. I'm talking about more than 30 actual nuclear reactors like soviet BES-5, TOPAZ-I and U.S. SNAP-10A

          • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

            You seem to be mistaken.

            "BES-5, also known as Bouk or Buk (Russian: , lit.'beech'), was a Soviet thermoelectric generator"
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            Six TOPAZ-II reactors and their associated support equipment were flown to the US, where they were extensively ground tested by US, British, French, and Russian engineers. The reactors' unique design allowed them to be tested without being fuelled. Although the test program was considered a success, no plans were pursued to fly any of the reactors.
            https:/ [wikipedia.org]

            • No, you are confounding RTG with thermoelectric generator.

              Read the wkipedia article, look at the diagrams. those are full 100KW fast fission nuclear reactors with 90 percent enriched fuel.

            • and you skipped over TOPAZ-I reactors!!

              "TOPAZ was first flown in 1987 on the experimental Plazma-A satellites Kosmos 1818 and Kosmos 1867, which were intended to test both the TOPAZ reactor and the Plasma-2 SPT electric engine. Both reactors were damaged in the 1990s, causing a leak of radioactive coolant."

              • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

                Apparently the entire project was abandoned, and the reactor designs are 30-40 years old. Where are the "more than 30 of them up there"?

                It isn't impossible to develop a modern 10kWe fission reactor of some kind and get it into space. It isn't impossible to eventually mount one in a spacecraft that goes to Neptune. But it does seem unlikely that China, which hasn't sent anything past Mars as far as I can tell, will be able to do it in 2030. Lets see them put a working version in orbit first.

                • Where are they? They're in this wikipedia list, most still up there (list has both fission reactors and RTF) since their orbits would decay in thousands of years. Most of them soviet.

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                  There also was Kosmos 954 with rocket and ejection system that malfunctioned during launch and reactor debris landed on a 600 km long swath in northern Canada... oops.

  • I would think a nuclear thermal battery would be much more reliable than a fission reactor.. Remember repairing or making unplanned physical adjustments of the probe is not an option if it has trouble after launch..
    • People who build space probes understand that repairing after launch is not an option very well.

    • by putaro ( 235078 )

      RTGs (Radioisotope Thermal Generators) don't put out that much power - a few hundred watts at most. An actual fission reactor will produce a lot more.

    • seriously? you're talking something with 300 hundred times as much power as typical RTG. The number of extra instruments alone it could power makes it smart choice.

  • Long March 5 (LM-5; or Changzheng 5 (CZ-5), and also known by its nickname "Pang-Wu", "Fat-Five"), is a Chinese heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) quod Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Its payload to LEO is 25,000 kg. Fairing 5.2 meters. It launched in 2019.

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