A lot is finally happening in space travel. The kind of progress I hoped for when I was about 12 or so. Now I'm 59. I hope I can stay around for a while longer so I can see some of it.
The Dragonfly mission to Titan is something I’m really looking forward to. Isn’t it a shame that Dragonfly won’t be visiting one of the lakes or oceans just to take some awesome pictures? Why is that?
mostly engineering and technical reasons, what i remember is that north pole where the lakes are will be in winter with no sunlight and not pointing at earth, they don't have a orbital relay around saturn
@@Radrook353Agreed. Makes you wonder why Nasa keeps avoiding the liquid. They always seem to have a weak excuse for doing so. Very frustrating and disappointing.
@@Radrook353Agreed. Makes you wonder why Nasa keeps avoiding the liquid. They always seem to have a weak excuse for doing so. Very frustrating and disappointing.
I feel like the images we get out of titan are going to be unlike any world we've probed so far. When the huygens probe got that grainy, distorted foortage of its touchdown; I still was amazed.
What bothered me about that footage was that what had seemed to be mountains and dry river beds gradually turned out to merely be very shallow surface anomalies on a flat plain dotted with pebbles.
Fraiser, a correction to the video: being an octo-copter (or a hex copter, a quad copter, etc.) does not prevent a vehicle from being a helicopter. In fact, the inclusion of "copter" in the description implies that it _is_ a helicopter. There are things that can prevent a vehicle from being a helicopter (being a tilt-rotor, being just a normal plane, having unpowered rotors, etc.), but as long as there's at least one rotor, rotor count is _not_ one of those things.
Big fan of nuclear thermal, thanks for covering it! There's a problem with getting to Mars faster though - the 6 month transfer time allows for a free-return-trajectory should you miss your Mars orbital insertion (MOI) burn. A faster transit time does not. If you get there in
I believe the main reason why Dragonfly will not visit the methane lakes on Titan is that the lakes, found mostly nearly the North Pole, will be in darkness at the time when Dragonfly arrives, making exploring them just about impossible. So Dragonfly will arrive at the wrong time of the Titan Year as far as exploring the lakes is concerned. There may be a few lakes in the equatorial regions where Dragonfly is headed but if Dragonfly does find any and explodes them, it will be a matter of luck and not intention. This is still a very exciting mission and if all goes well. Dragonfly will make so many wonderful discoveries and add our knowledge of Titan immensely. We shall just have to wait and see!
You have a good grasp on Titans geography and seasons. Not something most would know. Im assuming you have natural curiosity which usually = higher than average intelligence. Then came the exploding methane lake remark..
There are some fast spectrum molten salt reactors under development right now that may be well suited for the kind of combined nuclear powered rocket being proposed here. They run at very high temperature and in some cases like the Elysium reactor will use table salt as the liquid medium in the reactor. That design will also be simplified compared to some other designs, it's basically an empty reactor vessel "can" with heat exchangers. The fluid salt both contains the fissile material and is pumped from the reactor into the heat exchangers to provide heat to electrical generators or in this case also to heat propellant. The first iteration of the Elysium reactor will run at over 600 degrees celsius and later versions with high temperature alloy vessels made with hastelloy at over 1,300 degree celsius.
Fast spectrum is the hot topic in reactors, but not a mature technology... I don't know if molten salt rectors is going to be easily compatible with radiative cooling or mission weight scale any time soon. . That usually means sub-critical mass reactors and neutron mirrors. Might be good for the first manned mission to Jupiter, though.
@@GlennJTison The Elysium team is highly experienced from decades designing nuclear reactors for the US Navy, it is basically the entire team from the Knollls Atomic Power Labs. Their goal is rapid certification, it's not going to be that long before they have a working reactor. The fuel cycle processing is far simpler than most, as it involves dropping chopped up SNF into molten salt. Plus the addition of the needed plutonium to bring it up to critical concentration in the salt. When Kirk Sorensen was at NASA doing research on possible nuclear reactors for use in space he focused on MSRs for their ability over other designs to use radiative cooling. It's where the current interest in molten salt reactors started. Molten salt reactors themselves date back to the 1950s and were first built to power bombers. They have been operated in flight in B-36s. This is mature technology and it would seem highly suited for use in space. The Elysium design is highly dependent on the use of reactor can geometry and neutron reflectors to operate. It should scale well both in size and weight for use in space.
The Elysium reactor is a nice design, but any nuclear propulsion system will end up with tens of tonnes of shielding. And then if you're doing nuclear-electric you need a heat engine and that requires a very large and massive radiator. All of which steals from the theoretical advantage.
Hey Frasier, shadow astronomy sounds really "cool" but how do astronomers tell the difference between a genuine shadow caused by a foreground object on the CMB verses a temperature variation in the CMB itself? Also, is shadow astronomy done with other cosmic background spectra (radio, X-ray ect,)?
I wonder if there's a way to arrange such a hybrid rocket such that the ejected mass is also accelerated by the ion drive, getting more bang for the buck essentially.
4:00 Hydrogen can be collected from a funnel in the nose, stored in a tank, and not wasted by just bouncing away, thereby taking the energy with it. Does the second method require a fuel tank?
@TVChannel One The frontal area would be the same as the spaceship itself. The mass would equate itself to the mass of the Frontal Shields plus accumulation tanks.
With the hybrid nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion would it have seperate modes to switch between them? Also would it use both at the same time or would it use the nuclear electric propulsion instead of coasting after using the ntp mode?
2:30 Whenever I see that NASA BNTR AG/MTV animation I always wonder how much mass is save by ejecting that tank when you include the mass of the extra bulk heads skeleton structure and ejection mechanism instead just a single structural fuel tank. I also wonder why it has more one engine. An acceleration that last one hour rather than three does almost nothing to your total flight time one NTR engine is plenty of thrust for interplanetary manoeuvres so that seems like more unnecessary mass.
Hey Fraser, what's your take - is there much point in going to Titan and not going to the Methane lakes? Isn't that a bit like going to Saturn and not checking out the rings?
titan is so much more than the lakes though, it has a earth like atmosphere, complex chemicals everywhere, the sand are made from hydrocarbons, also it's not like there liquid only in the lakes, we maybe see some small ponds, wet ground or if we are lucky even rain, we might study the frozen water spilled by the cryovolcanos and much more and if there is life there, it's possible it's everywhere not only in the lakes. Also they have technical reasons for not going to the lakes, they will be pointing away from earth in constant darkness due to season
I'm skeptical that the rotors and their motors on the Titan Octocopter won't take on methane precipitation that freezes on contact (like cars in ice storms). Forming a granite rock solid shell around he entire vehicle. How could they prevent this?
Thanks for the news, Fraser! 😊 I fly quadcopters, but never flew an octo... Should be interesting. Now they're building big octacopters they call cinelifters, to carry those big cameras used for cinema and so on. Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
We used a helecoptor on Mars but this is a temprature range that we know how to work with composites that will not shatter in the cold. Titan is no where near this warm, and I wouder if the equipment would shatter if it was bumped even a little?
My understanding has always been that nuclear thermal propulsion is lower thrust than chemical propulsion, but higher specific impulse. The higher specific impulse is the advantage of the NTR because it can gain a higher velocity while using less fuel.
You are correct, and he should correct the video, NTRs will never have the trust-to-weight ratio of chemical rockets. NTRs will only be used in space after the chemical rockets get you there from the ground.
If they put an instrument like hubble in an orbit at an appropriate distance from earth, what kind of definition could they get of earth and what's happening hear?
Yeah the mighty United States of America can build rockets to boldly go where no man has gone before but they still can't build highspeed rail for improvement of infrastructure.
Interestingly, many do make that claim but it's not quite true. Creative accounting. Ironically though, much of their electricity generation comes from hydro power schemes, those same schemes environmentalists tried to shut down before they were even built decades ago. Yes, NZ is lucky. There are lots of ways to generate power from renewables. Most countries aren't so fortunate.
Those who say the blood of Patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government... If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.
Nuclear thermal rockets dont have quite the thrust that is possible with chemical rockets. What you are thinking about is the specific impulse, in other words how long you can burn the engine before running out of fuel. Maintaining a low thrust for a long, long period of time can get you to places much faster due to efficiency.
You don't have to select between nuclear and ion; There is 3rd option; New design Scott Manley mentioned but there aren't many topics about it, without need of creating electricity, molten reactant (likely liquidified thorium with molten salt carrier) can shoot out say argon, superheating to a point it ionizes, without the coil. Effectively you have same ionized hot nozzle gas (H2 on NERVA engine, *unknown on liquid reactor engine), and instead of carrying heavy rods, mechanisms, and coolant, the liquid does all things inside the engine, theoretically. (hoping to see that with my fingers X'd) Engineer note: You'll still need to introduce a cooling device of some sort but it'll be much lighter than e-ion engine copper coils, much lesser equipment than NERVA.
I think your under estimating the power of super solar flares, if you look at the 1859 carriton one it set the telegraph machines and wires on fire, if one of those hit today it would mostly likely would send us back to pre electricity state especially since our magnetic filed is actually failing, down around 20% and this is speeding up.
I'm hoping by the time Titan Drangonfly is flying through Titian's atmosphere and just a few metres above Titan that we all have Smellyvision. I love the Smell of methane and ethane in the morning.
I would guess that it would be dangerous. Saturn is over an hour of communication time away and avoiding landing in a lake of methane is more important.
because it can't. the lakes will be in a dark winter pointing away from earth so they can't communicate back. in the south there are a few smaller lakes so maybe they could've theoretically go there?
i think that the only reason why ion thrusters have slow movement is for a need for power efficiency. you should be able to scale up the thruster's size, and power as needed, even if it means using a standard steam turbogenerator with reactor to power it. you are almost there with vasmir.
Apropos different propulsion systems, the impossible engine or whatever the name was, no one are talking about that anymore, ok, but, there was another strange idea where we do not hear anything anymore, an elderly guy working on some kind of technology that mechanically should move back and forth, but change the mass in one direction, accelerate a spaceship, I think this solution was kind of covered here some years ago? Any news on any of these relatively unorthodox attempts to move trough space?
Imagine what would happen if a solar maximum coincided with a collapse of the earth's magnetic field during a pole reversal event. It looks like the magnetic field is heading towards a reversal event quite soon.
that which looks like a black rip in reality a few decimeters in length that sometimes appears a few meters away from me in the night is quite beautiful
Do we have any companies developing full scale excavator equipment like loaders dumping vehicles or borrowing machines that would work on Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?
I've been reading up on nuclear-powered rockets and such for as long as they've been being even hinted at, because this kind of science absofreakinglutely fascinates me. And now the nuclear-powered copter to explore Titan‽ That one makes me want to jump up & down with excitement! SIX WEEKS to Mars‽‽ Holy freaking _~bleeping bleepety bleeping bleep,~_ that's so incredibly cool! What a crazy cool idea!! But I hope they can figure out the moon craft to get it where it needs to be. The solar flare thing... that could make such a CRAZY huge difference for us! Having weather warnings for getting a few days longer time to get prepared would be so helpful! If only catching those promise-breakers would have some sort of weight behind it, some kind of fines, at minimum, it would make all of these abilities meaningful. The fetal stars are fascinating, but the shadow thing made a Doctor Who episode come to mind, with the monsters called the Vashta Nerada, and the warning phrase "count the shadows!" Thanks for the coolness, Fraser! ❤️❤️
Lol!! The mighty United States of America can spend billions to boldly go where no man has gone before but they still can't build highspeed rail for improvement of infrastructure, how about building something that will save the american people money on their electric bill? Is their something the United States government can do to ease the cost of living? How about spending those billions to feed the american people who are homeless and hungry? Use those billions to better living conditions for the american people? Oh hell no! Let's spend the billions of dollars to put some fool on mars, a planet that doesn't even belong to man. You'll never catch me placeing my hopes and dreams on the shoulders of no man. Never catch me voting for no man.
I wish RTGs could be made available to the public, so we would never have to pay an electric company, or worry about solar panels or wind or the maintenance those systems require when they degrade. Voyager proves the RTGs 50 years ago run without maintenance for decades. Modern technology should be able to do even better, high power levels and safer. At least until a RonCo Mr. Fusion is sailable.
Yes, 50 years no maintenance but eternal care for radioactivity. Recall Sadam Hussein, Ghadafi, Idi Amin, that German Adolf or other dudes. If they could just collect your radioaktive waste from the garbage bin and reburn it to nuclear bombs - brave new world. Not a great idea!
RTG fuel is essentially poisonous, and moreover _there already isn't enough_ for things that people want to do. Also, the power supplied is _already_ really low. Looking for household nuclear power is currently a fool's errand. Also, the hate against power companies is overblown.
I wonder how would material of the blades, rotor, and other components cope with extremely low temperatures on Titan's atmosphere? I know everything become very brittle and lubricant lost its viscosity on low temperatures, even on our own planet's antarctic winter conditions.
I think they can keep the greased bearings in the electric motors sufficiently warm with the plutonium power doohickey they'll be using. As for parts exposed to atmosphere, I think we have materials that will be fine in those temps -- especially considering that the vehicle doesn't have to be as light as it would need to be on Earth, owing to lower gravity and higher atmospheric pressure. So I'm wondering if they could use materials like stainless steel.
@@CoruscationsOfIneptitude - Titan is colder than the poles on Earth. Water there is basically like igneous rock. Makes up a bunch of the bedrock, and cryo-volcanoes there erupt molten H2O.
Titan has to be one of the most interesting objects in the solar system because it has a lot of similarities to earth. I would even say that aside from its cold temperature and lower gravity, it is the most earth-like object in the solar system on it's surface and the only one other than earth that a human could actually stand on without a pressure suit. Although to be fair, you would still need to be very well insulated from the cold and certainly have a supply of oxygen to breath which could possibly be combustible in the Titanian atmosphere. Also while I don't think it would be immediately harmful, there is no way of knowing what the long term effects of skin exposure or trace inhalation of the actual contents of Titian's atmosphere would be until a human far braver than I am goes on what might be a one-way trip to that moon and lives there long enough to find out.
Could you turn something like a SpaceX raptor, engine, and a nuclear heat engine into a hybrid By putting the nuclear engine maybe downstream slightly from the raptor rocket Engine?
Question? Do we know what is the best way to divert asteroids from hitting the earth is? Launching an interceptor from earth to impact the asteroid, or having many spacecraft in an orbit out as far as Jupiter to intercept the asteroids.
I wonder if a thermal nuclear rocket can be fabricated so as well the nuclear fuel is spent, it might provide a source of plutonium-238 to make it into radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG)? So handy on those long lunar nights or power beyond the orbit of Jupiter - or even in Martian dust storms!
The shortened travel-times in space (from Earth to Mars, for example) is fascinating. I imagine that this number is variable, but I wonder if we know, or if you can report, what the sustained g-force is for the continued/constant acceleration? As a pilot, I am quite familiar with what, say, 2-g feels like... and as a human undergoing space travel, I am not sure I would want to be experiencing 2-g for days and weeks on end. So, my question is just curiosity... but, do we know what kinds of g-force we're talking for a 45-day journey to Mars?
My math says you'd need 0.02g to travel 2.5AU (max Earth-Mars distance) in 45 days (half acceleration, half deceleration). The distance goes down to around 0.6 AU. So it seems they'd be in freefall most of the time, or in a "gravity" that would prevent things from flying around, but you couldn't really walk. I could be wrong, of course.
I know that gas giants are called failed stars because they are composed of mainly of hydrogen and helium, basically the same elements that our sun is composed of. But what happened to these planets during formation that they didn't become actual stars. What classifies as a "successful" star? Is it just an object with the biggest mass in the middle of a system?
It's an object large enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. The main reason why none of the gas Giants got big enough for that is cause there wasn't enough left over gas to make them that big. The sun already gobbled up most of it and then when it began fusing it's heat and light blew away most of the remaining gas halting the gas giants growth.
Brown dwarfs come closer to igniting the type of fusion you get in full-blown stars -- I think there's a little bit of deuterium fusion early on in the life of some brown dwarfs, IIRC.
3:38 that was the flaw in human history with nuclear, they were using nuclear🔋cell, to power a dinky 🏟 size mono halogen lamp 🔦 . As merely *storage* time. When ion/plasma could've been nuclear *amp thrust* booster. Offering less idle time, regen & a conservative gravity 0.5 to 1.5 gforce comfort in exponential accel.
The nuclear powered rocket sounds very exciting! That will be major, major breakthrough in space travel. The solar flare is scary! That will happen...someday. We do need ample warning.
a big enough solar flare could be an extinction event. the power lines would melt, and the transformers will explode. planes will fall from the sky. in 2012, there were 3 that missed us by less than 150k miles.
11:38 I often see videos with ads at their VERY END. It seems silly, but (I guess) it pays. Maybe put ads there and I (with many more of your viewers, I think) will never skip them. Then the ads pay more / somehow better, right? I don't really know how it works, but ads at the very end sure pay some money, and nobody really minds them.
The big advantage of a nuclear thermal rockety is not high thrust, in fact the thrust to weight ratio sucks compared to conventional chemical rockets. That's why they would be no use in launch vehicles, apart from the radiological hazard. However, they can produce thrust levels comparable to chemical rockets in a useable package, which is probably what you were aiming for. The big advantage is in specific impulse, efficiency. Most NTR designs are around twice as efficient as a chemical rocket. Of course, ion propulsion is even more efficient, but it's thrust is pitiful. But if you can combine the two, I can see how you could get even higher efficiency with reasonable thust levels.
Hi Fraser, although a long-time subscriber and fan of your channel and videos, I really must take issue with you. In the item "Solar Flashes and Flares" you refer (8:10) to the "Entire Eastern Seaboard . . . ." of where? Of China, or Africa, or perhaps Brazil. There is a well-known picture on the Web, of a Globe of the World, as seen by Hollywood, the U.S. media & TV, etc. It shows a wonderful water planet, with Alaska and the continental USA as the only land masses. I had honestly thought that you Fraser, as an educated journalist, would have realised that you had fans in these strange places, called "other countries" ! 😄 All the Best and a belated Happy New Year.
I'm talking about Canada, where we experienced a deadly solar storm in 1989. But I can appreciate that other countries exist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
@@frasercain Thanks for taking the time to reply Fraser. Much appreciated. And yes, I do realise you know your geography. Criticism intended only in good humour. Your channel is always informative and well worth watching. Many thanks. P.S. I know you're Canadian, right?
The problem with the analogy of the Sun / CMB is that we have a much better understanding of the light coming from the Sun than from the CMB. After all, if you mis-guess the level of CMB then your shadows will have more or less information in them.
if I am still around in 2034, I will be 85 years old. I can always hope to see what Titan actually looks like. Thanks for the information.
Hope to see you there! I'm excited too.
So you were born in 1949 too, eh? I may make it to 80, I'm less sure about anything past that. I hope we both get to see what . Titan looks like.
A lot is finally happening in space travel.
The kind of progress I hoped for when I was about 12 or so.
Now I'm 59.
I hope I can stay around for a while longer so I can see some of it.
nobody can predict tomorrow, tomorrow is not promised which means you may not be around in 2034. just saying🤷🏽♂️
Um look up huygens images--we already landed something on titan
Imagine power going down for a month ... in Puerto Rico we call that a Tuesday.
It's got to be so tough going through those power disruptions. :-(
Tuesday is a month in your country?
@@WilhelmFreidrich Apparently.
And all other days of the next month.
The Dragonfly mission to Titan is something I’m really looking forward to.
Isn’t it a shame that Dragonfly won’t be visiting one of the lakes or oceans just to take some awesome pictures? Why is that?
I'd love that too, like so much. I want to see a methane breathing lezard!!
mostly engineering and technical reasons, what i remember is that north pole where the lakes are will be in winter with no sunlight and not pointing at earth, they don't have a orbital relay around saturn
Thy do the same with Mars. Never send the machines to the poles where the views would be spectacular. Makes you w9nder.
@@Radrook353Agreed. Makes you wonder why Nasa keeps avoiding the liquid. They always seem to have a weak excuse for doing so. Very frustrating and disappointing.
@@Radrook353Agreed. Makes you wonder why Nasa keeps avoiding the liquid. They always seem to have a weak excuse for doing so. Very frustrating and disappointing.
I feel like the images we get out of titan are going to be unlike any world we've probed so far. When the huygens probe got that grainy, distorted foortage of its touchdown; I still was amazed.
What bothered me about that footage was that what had seemed to be mountains and dry river beds gradually turned out to merely be very shallow surface anomalies on a flat plain dotted with pebbles.
Fraiser, a correction to the video: being an octo-copter (or a hex copter, a quad copter, etc.) does not prevent a vehicle from being a helicopter. In fact, the inclusion of "copter" in the description implies that it _is_ a helicopter. There are things that can prevent a vehicle from being a helicopter (being a tilt-rotor, being just a normal plane, having unpowered rotors, etc.), but as long as there's at least one rotor, rotor count is _not_ one of those things.
So an autogyro, with a rotating but unpowered rotor/wingset, is not a kind of helecopter?
@@ReggieArford A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors.
...it's not a Unicopter. (Which I'm told is the preferred transport of affluent unicorns.)
ROFLCOPTER
@@ReggieArford no an autogyro is a different animal
How did I miss this gem of a channel?!! I'll get ALL notifications now. Space geeks unite!!!
It's Canadian.
Thanks
Big fan of nuclear thermal, thanks for covering it! There's a problem with getting to Mars faster though - the 6 month transfer time allows for a free-return-trajectory should you miss your Mars orbital insertion (MOI) burn. A faster transit time does not. If you get there in
Frasier, thanks for what you do. This stuff is all cool af.
I believe the main reason why Dragonfly will not visit the methane lakes on Titan is that the lakes, found mostly nearly the North Pole, will be in darkness at the time when Dragonfly arrives, making exploring them just about impossible. So Dragonfly will arrive at the wrong time of the Titan Year as far as exploring the lakes is concerned. There may be a few lakes in the equatorial regions where Dragonfly is headed but if Dragonfly does find any and explodes them, it will be a matter of luck and not intention. This is still a very exciting mission and if all goes well. Dragonfly will make so many wonderful discoveries and add our knowledge of Titan immensely. We shall just have to wait and see!
the lakes can't explode, the reason methane burns on earth is because of oxygen
Highly unlikely to explode them.
You have a good grasp on Titans geography and seasons. Not something most would know. Im assuming you have natural curiosity which usually = higher than average intelligence. Then came the exploding methane lake remark..
There are some fast spectrum molten salt reactors under development right now that may be well suited for the kind of combined nuclear powered rocket being proposed here. They run at very high temperature and in some cases like the Elysium reactor will use table salt as the liquid medium in the reactor. That design will also be simplified compared to some other designs, it's basically an empty reactor vessel "can" with heat exchangers. The fluid salt both contains the fissile material and is pumped from the reactor into the heat exchangers to provide heat to electrical generators or in this case also to heat propellant.
The first iteration of the Elysium reactor will run at over 600 degrees celsius and later versions with high temperature alloy vessels made with hastelloy at over 1,300 degree celsius.
Fast spectrum is the hot topic in reactors, but not a mature technology... I don't know if molten salt rectors is going to be easily compatible with radiative cooling or mission weight scale any time soon. . That usually means sub-critical mass reactors and neutron mirrors.
Might be good for the first manned mission to Jupiter, though.
@@GlennJTison The Elysium team is highly experienced from decades designing nuclear reactors for the US Navy, it is basically the entire team from the Knollls Atomic Power Labs. Their goal is rapid certification, it's not going to be that long before they have a working reactor.
The fuel cycle processing is far simpler than most, as it involves dropping chopped up SNF into molten salt. Plus the addition of the needed plutonium to bring it up to critical concentration in the salt.
When Kirk Sorensen was at NASA doing research on possible nuclear reactors for use in space he focused on MSRs for their ability over other designs to use radiative cooling. It's where the current interest in molten salt reactors started.
Molten salt reactors themselves date back to the 1950s and were first built to power bombers. They have been operated in flight in B-36s.
This is mature technology and it would seem highly suited for use in space.
The Elysium design is highly dependent on the use of reactor can geometry and neutron reflectors to operate. It should scale well both in size and weight for use in space.
The new Fusion pulse generators, would make a nifty spaceship propulsion system.
The Elysium reactor is a nice design, but any nuclear propulsion system will end up with tens of tonnes of shielding. And then if you're doing nuclear-electric you need a heat engine and that requires a very large and massive radiator. All of which steals from the theoretical advantage.
@@CoruscationsOfIneptitude At least. That's the problem with neutrons. You need a lot of mass to stop them.
Hey Frasier, shadow astronomy sounds really "cool" but how do astronomers tell the difference between a genuine shadow caused by a foreground object on the CMB verses a temperature variation in the CMB itself? Also, is shadow astronomy done with other cosmic background spectra (radio, X-ray ect,)?
15:28 Does anyone have any idea what effect that is? I couldnt find it on google
I wonder if there's a way to arrange such a hybrid rocket such that the ejected mass is also accelerated by the ion drive, getting more bang for the buck essentially.
4:00 Hydrogen can be collected from a funnel in the nose, stored in a tank, and not wasted by just bouncing away, thereby taking the energy with it.
Does the second method require a fuel tank?
@Kraik not very much, but it's probably going to be a choice of use it or lose it. Every bit you use is something that you didn't launch with.
The drag from the funnel and the funnel mass, would need to be offset by the thrust from the collected fuel... :)
@TVChannel One The frontal area would be the same as the spaceship itself. The mass would equate itself to the mass of the Frontal Shields plus accumulation tanks.
This is an amazing time for space exploration. I am sure people will be saying this for generations on, but the innovation and growth is exciting.
With the hybrid nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion would it have seperate modes to switch between them? Also would it use both at the same time or would it use the nuclear electric propulsion instead of coasting after using the ntp mode?
2:30 Whenever I see that NASA BNTR AG/MTV animation I always wonder how much mass is save by ejecting that tank when you include the mass of the extra bulk heads skeleton structure and ejection mechanism instead just a single structural fuel tank. I also wonder why it has more one engine. An acceleration that last one hour rather than three does almost nothing to your total flight time one NTR engine is plenty of thrust for interplanetary manoeuvres so that seems like more unnecessary mass.
Awsome, this is the kind of thing which cn be a game changer for Mars exploration too
Hey Fraser, what's your take - is there much point in going to Titan and not going to the Methane lakes? Isn't that a bit like going to Saturn and not checking out the rings?
titan is so much more than the lakes though, it has a earth like atmosphere, complex chemicals everywhere, the sand are made from hydrocarbons, also it's not like there liquid only in the lakes, we maybe see some small ponds, wet ground or if we are lucky even rain, we might study the frozen water spilled by the cryovolcanos and much more
and if there is life there, it's possible it's everywhere not only in the lakes.
Also they have technical reasons for not going to the lakes, they will be pointing away from earth in constant darkness due to season
I Didn't know that much about Titan mission thanks for the video
I'm skeptical that the rotors and their motors on the Titan Octocopter won't take on methane precipitation that freezes on contact (like cars in ice storms). Forming a granite rock solid shell around he entire vehicle. How could they prevent this?
Man that's awesome it seems like so much weight to get into orbit for the nuclear power propulsion!
What's the advantage of dual propulsion?
Where was that coal plant located?
This is exactly what I needed right now
You won't have to wait that long ! Expected arrival on Titan 2034 ! So only 11 years lol .
Love to hear your take on fission fragment rockets.
Thanks for the news, Fraser! 😊
I fly quadcopters, but never flew an octo... Should be interesting. Now they're building big octacopters they call cinelifters, to carry those big cameras used for cinema and so on.
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
could thorium based nuclear enegy be used instedof plutnim beased ones so then you can'treclme the reactor to make a nuclear bomb some day .
I hear Titan's atmosphere is so dense, You could fly an Ornithopter in it
Atmosphere so dense and gravity so low.
We used a helecoptor on Mars but this is a temprature range that we know how to work with composites that will not shatter in the cold. Titan is no where near this warm, and I wouder if the equipment would shatter if it was bumped even a little?
Can you not scale an Ion drive ship up to provide better acceleration? Just add more/bigger engines and more nuclear fuel/solar panels?
I prefer pulsar's option. How about a week or better yet using the electric charge of the solar wind.
The TDT! Great to hear about that tunnel, enjoyed some time there.
A thermal nuclear rocket does not have higher thrust, but higher specific impulse. This means the total deltaV achievable is higher.
One of the BEST TH-cam channels. Love the LACK of ads. This is THE channel i listen to while commuting to work everyday 👍
My understanding has always been that nuclear thermal propulsion is lower thrust than chemical propulsion, but higher specific impulse. The higher specific impulse is the advantage of the NTR because it can gain a higher velocity while using less fuel.
You are correct, and he should correct the video, NTRs will never have the trust-to-weight ratio of chemical rockets. NTRs will only be used in space after the chemical rockets get you there from the ground.
Good video - no loud music ruining it
How many sleeps will it take to get back?
If they put an instrument like hubble in an orbit at an appropriate distance from earth, what kind of definition could they get of earth and what's happening hear?
The new Fusion pulse generators, would make a nifty spaceship propulsion system.
Titan mission seems so amazing. Can't wait!
Yeah the mighty United States of America can build rockets to boldly go where no man has gone before but they still can't build highspeed rail for improvement of infrastructure.
@@carlsmith5545 why not do both and just....not have a war for a decade?
@@ryann6919 Because the so called mighty United States of America dosent know how to do that.
@@carlsmith5545 agreed. And that is going to be our downfall, just like Rome. Maybe one day we will learn
Hi Fraser, what is the speed of the Ions coming out of an Ion drive, could a long linear accelerator make them faster and improve the delta-v ?
Yes but not without a big hit to the mass of the craft. They function under similar principles. One day maybe......
Warp factor 10!
@@1pcfred as logical as any of these silly comments!!!
@@vincentanguoni8938 bang zoom to the Moon Alice!
10:00 - Good to see New Zealand contributing exactly 0.0% CO2.
Interestingly, many do make that claim but it's not quite true. Creative accounting. Ironically though, much of their electricity generation comes from hydro power schemes, those same schemes environmentalists tried to shut down before they were even built decades ago. Yes, NZ is lucky. There are lots of ways to generate power from renewables. Most countries aren't so fortunate.
is 15:30 a real telescope image?
On Titan is the pressure earthlike?
Titans surface pressure is about the same and being 15m under water iirc
Those who say the blood of Patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government... If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.
8:51 to 9:13 I wonder what a red dwarf would look like? Maybe 2x or 4x this speed?
Nuclear thermal rockets dont have quite the thrust that is possible with chemical rockets. What you are thinking about is the specific impulse, in other words how long you can burn the engine before running out of fuel. Maintaining a low thrust for a long, long period of time can get you to places much faster due to efficiency.
You don't have to select between nuclear and ion; There is 3rd option;
New design Scott Manley mentioned but there aren't many topics about it, without need of creating electricity, molten reactant (likely liquidified thorium with molten salt carrier) can shoot out say argon, superheating to a point it ionizes, without the coil. Effectively you have same ionized hot nozzle gas (H2 on NERVA engine, *unknown on liquid reactor engine), and instead of carrying heavy rods, mechanisms, and coolant, the liquid does all things inside the engine, theoretically. (hoping to see that with my fingers X'd)
Engineer note: You'll still need to introduce a cooling device of some sort but it'll be much lighter than e-ion engine copper coils, much lesser equipment than NERVA.
I think your under estimating the power of super solar flares, if you look at the 1859 carriton one it set the telegraph machines and wires on fire, if one of those hit today it would mostly likely would send us back to pre electricity state especially since our magnetic filed is actually failing, down around 20% and this is speeding up.
Hi Frasier, I was wondering: why is it not a priority for the Titan Dragonfly to visit the methane lakes? Thank you for the excellent content.
That was really surprising. You'd think the methane lake shores would be objective one. (Or at least included).
I'm hoping by the time Titan Drangonfly is flying through Titian's atmosphere and just a few metres above Titan that we all have Smellyvision. I love the Smell of methane and ethane in the morning.
I would guess that it would be dangerous. Saturn is over an hour of communication time away and avoiding landing in a lake of methane is more important.
because it can't. the lakes will be in a dark winter pointing away from earth so they can't communicate back. in the south there are a few smaller lakes so maybe they could've theoretically go there?
What about the sirens of Titan?
Probably my favourite show on TH-cam
Excellent video, like!
Professor, I subscribed. Your information about the Earth status is amazing.
i think that the only reason why ion thrusters have slow movement is for a need for power efficiency. you should be able to scale up the thruster's size, and power as needed, even if it means using a standard steam turbogenerator with reactor to power it. you are almost there with vasmir.
Chef's kiss for Anton's use of memes.
😉
Apropos different propulsion systems, the impossible engine or whatever the name was, no one are talking about that anymore, ok, but, there was another strange idea where we do not hear anything anymore, an elderly guy working on some kind of technology that mechanically should move back and forth, but change the mass in one direction, accelerate a spaceship, I think this solution was kind of covered here some years ago?
Any news on any of these relatively unorthodox attempts to move trough space?
Imagine what would happen if a solar maximum coincided with a collapse of the earth's magnetic field during a pole reversal event. It looks like the magnetic field is heading towards a reversal event quite soon.
that which looks like a
black rip in reality
a few decimeters in length
that sometimes appears a few meters away from me in the night
is quite beautiful
I've never seen the info that shows how astronauts managed to protect themselves from the Van Allen Radiation Belt, is there a video that covers that?
Manned missions away from Earth _minimize_ exposure to the belts.
Do we have any companies developing full scale excavator equipment like loaders dumping vehicles or borrowing machines that would work on Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn?
Has NASA approached. Companies like CAT? And what power plants would work to operate them? Just asking.
Not on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but they're being developed for the Moon.
I've been reading up on nuclear-powered rockets and such for as long as they've been being even hinted at, because this kind of science absofreakinglutely fascinates me. And now the nuclear-powered copter to explore Titan‽ That one makes me want to jump up & down with excitement!
SIX WEEKS to Mars‽‽ Holy freaking _~bleeping bleepety bleeping bleep,~_ that's so incredibly cool! What a crazy cool idea!! But I hope they can figure out the moon craft to get it where it needs to be.
The solar flare thing... that could make such a CRAZY huge difference for us! Having weather warnings for getting a few days longer time to get prepared would be so helpful!
If only catching those promise-breakers would have some sort of weight behind it, some kind of fines, at minimum, it would make all of these abilities meaningful.
The fetal stars are fascinating, but the shadow thing made a Doctor Who episode come to mind, with the monsters called the Vashta Nerada, and the warning phrase "count the shadows!"
Thanks for the coolness, Fraser!
❤️❤️
Lol!! The mighty United States of America can spend billions to boldly go where no man has gone before but they still can't build highspeed rail for improvement of infrastructure, how about building something that will save the american people money on their electric bill? Is their something the United States government can do to ease the cost of living? How about spending those billions to feed the american people who are homeless and hungry? Use those billions to better living conditions for the american people? Oh hell no! Let's spend the billions of dollars to put some fool on mars, a planet that doesn't even belong to man. You'll never catch me placeing my hopes and dreams on the shoulders of no man. Never catch me voting for no man.
WOW!!! Those are serious rotors !!!
I really want to know if the sky scape on Titan will have Saturn* massive and looming in it or if the cloud cover will be too much.
You mean saturn? Clouds will likely obscure, atomsphere is thicc.
@@ridleyroid9060 I did mean Saturn, I was even thinking of the rings but misspoke.
It would seem possible to me to get an image with both Titan and Saturn in the frame, while in or approaching orbit, at least. Which would be dope.
I wish RTGs could be made available to the public, so we would never have to pay an electric company, or worry about solar panels or wind or the maintenance those systems require when they degrade. Voyager proves the RTGs 50 years ago run without maintenance for decades. Modern technology should be able to do even better, high power levels and safer. At least until a RonCo Mr. Fusion is sailable.
Yes, 50 years no maintenance but eternal care for radioactivity. Recall Sadam Hussein, Ghadafi, Idi Amin, that German Adolf or other dudes. If they could just collect your radioaktive waste from the garbage bin and reburn it to nuclear bombs - brave new world. Not a great idea!
Giving every one nuclear fuel is a bad idea
That would not be profitable to the power companies.
@@lolmaify485 maybe if there’s some other element that could be mixed in that would be a pain to remove would prevent calamities
RTG fuel is essentially poisonous, and moreover _there already isn't enough_ for things that people want to do. Also, the power supplied is _already_ really low. Looking for household nuclear power is currently a fool's errand.
Also, the hate against power companies is overblown.
Lord Fraser, I wish it will be there in 10 years, but you know how NASA is with delays, I sadly will probably be dead. Love your content brother
I wonder how would material of the blades, rotor, and other components cope with extremely low temperatures on Titan's atmosphere? I know everything become very brittle and lubricant lost its viscosity on low temperatures, even on our own planet's antarctic winter conditions.
I think they can keep the greased bearings in the electric motors sufficiently warm with the plutonium power doohickey they'll be using. As for parts exposed to atmosphere, I think we have materials that will be fine in those temps -- especially considering that the vehicle doesn't have to be as light as it would need to be on Earth, owing to lower gravity and higher atmospheric pressure. So I'm wondering if they could use materials like stainless steel.
@@CoruscationsOfIneptitude - Titan is colder than the poles on Earth. Water there is basically like igneous rock. Makes up a bunch of the bedrock, and cryo-volcanoes there erupt molten H2O.
Titan has to be one of the most interesting objects in the solar system because it has a lot of similarities to earth.
I would even say that aside from its cold temperature and lower gravity, it is the most earth-like object in the solar system on it's surface and the only one other than earth that a human could actually stand on without a pressure suit. Although to be fair, you would still need to be very well insulated from the cold and certainly have a supply of oxygen to breath which could possibly be combustible in the Titanian atmosphere. Also while I don't think it would be immediately harmful, there is no way of knowing what the long term effects of skin exposure or trace inhalation of the actual contents of Titian's atmosphere would be until a human far braver than I am goes on what might be a one-way trip to that moon and lives there long enough to find out.
It's about time. Nuclear Power is the way to go.
Could you turn something like a SpaceX raptor, engine, and a nuclear heat engine into a hybrid By putting the nuclear engine maybe downstream slightly from the raptor rocket Engine?
Question? Do we know what is the best way to divert asteroids from hitting the earth is? Launching an interceptor from earth to impact the asteroid, or having many spacecraft in an orbit out as far as Jupiter to intercept the asteroids.
I didn’t like your style very much at first but you have a great mission and a great heart !
How is a helicopter able to operate on titan, when there isn’t any air?
It has an atmosphere that's twice as dense as Earth
More NIAC please!
Yep, if anything or anyone is left it'll be awesome. Good job Brandon.
Amazing! Science Fiction is becoming Science Fact in front of our eyes 👀
If you want real science fiction check out the national debt. That stuff is unreal!
How long would it take a mentos rocket to get to mars?🤔
I wonder if a thermal nuclear rocket can be fabricated so as well the nuclear fuel is spent, it might provide a source of plutonium-238 to make it into radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG)? So handy on those long lunar nights or power beyond the orbit of Jupiter - or even in Martian dust storms!
The shortened travel-times in space (from Earth to Mars, for example) is fascinating. I imagine that this number is variable, but I wonder if we know, or if you can report, what the sustained g-force is for the continued/constant acceleration? As a pilot, I am quite familiar with what, say, 2-g feels like... and as a human undergoing space travel, I am not sure I would want to be experiencing 2-g for days and weeks on end. So, my question is just curiosity... but, do we know what kinds of g-force we're talking for a 45-day journey to Mars?
My math says you'd need 0.02g to travel 2.5AU (max Earth-Mars distance) in 45 days (half acceleration, half deceleration). The distance goes down to around 0.6 AU.
So it seems they'd be in freefall most of the time, or in a "gravity" that would prevent things from flying around, but you couldn't really walk.
I could be wrong, of course.
what if you create a powerful sterling engine which use nuclear heat and space cold to roll a room for gravity humanity needs is it possible?
I know that gas giants are called failed stars because they are composed of mainly of hydrogen and helium, basically the same elements that our sun is composed of. But what happened to these planets during formation that they didn't become actual stars. What classifies as a "successful" star? Is it just an object with the biggest mass in the middle of a system?
It's an object large enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. The main reason why none of the gas Giants got big enough for that is cause there wasn't enough left over gas to make them that big. The sun already gobbled up most of it and then when it began fusing it's heat and light blew away most of the remaining gas halting the gas giants growth.
Brown dwarfs come closer to igniting the type of fusion you get in full-blown stars -- I think there's a little bit of deuterium fusion early on in the life of some brown dwarfs, IIRC.
Why was the moon rotating 6:30, I thought it was locked to the earth and did not rotate.
The moon is tidally locked but it still rotates.... right?
3:38 that was the flaw in human history with nuclear, they were using nuclear🔋cell, to power a dinky 🏟 size mono halogen lamp 🔦 . As merely *storage* time. When ion/plasma could've been nuclear *amp thrust* booster. Offering less idle time, regen & a conservative gravity 0.5 to 1.5 gforce comfort in exponential accel.
The nuclear powered rocket sounds very exciting!
That will be major, major breakthrough in space travel.
The solar flare is scary! That will happen...someday. We do need ample warning.
By 2034 I should still have all my marbles and be able to appreciate and wonder at this achievement. I can't wait to see titan !
A Nitpick: The launch window to Mars is not "When it's closest to us" - It's "When it will be closest to us when we get there." Not -quite- the same.
a big enough solar flare could be an extinction event. the power lines would melt, and the transformers will explode. planes will fall from the sky. in 2012, there were 3 that missed us by less than 150k miles.
11:38 I often see videos with ads at their VERY END. It seems silly, but (I guess) it pays. Maybe put ads there and I (with many more of your viewers, I think) will never skip them. Then the ads pay more / somehow better, right? I don't really know how it works, but ads at the very end sure pay some money, and nobody really minds them.
This is awesome. Too bad it won't visit the methane seas though, that would really be something to feast your eyes on.
There are some smaller lakes across the equator, perhaps they could visit one?
@@rustyshackleford234 I hope they do 👍
The big advantage of a nuclear thermal rockety is not high thrust, in fact the thrust to weight ratio sucks compared to conventional chemical rockets. That's why they would be no use in launch vehicles, apart from the radiological hazard. However, they can produce thrust levels comparable to chemical rockets in a useable package, which is probably what you were aiming for.
The big advantage is in specific impulse, efficiency. Most NTR designs are around twice as efficient as a chemical rocket. Of course, ion propulsion is even more efficient, but it's thrust is pitiful. But if you can combine the two, I can see how you could get even higher efficiency with reasonable thust levels.
I still can't believe they aren't going to visit the Methane lakes. Maybe during the extended mission...
I agree -- Does anyone know the reasons behind that choice ?
You say a month of no power would suck but...a month of no light pollution sounds darn tempting
Worth it...
Hi Fraser, although a long-time subscriber and fan of your channel and videos, I really must take issue with you. In the item "Solar Flashes and Flares" you refer (8:10) to the "Entire Eastern Seaboard . . . ." of where? Of China, or Africa, or perhaps Brazil. There is a well-known picture on the Web, of a Globe of the World, as seen by Hollywood, the U.S. media & TV, etc. It shows a wonderful water planet, with Alaska and the continental USA as the only land masses. I had honestly thought that you Fraser, as an educated journalist, would have realised that you had fans in these strange places, called "other countries" ! 😄 All the Best and a belated Happy New Year.
I'm talking about Canada, where we experienced a deadly solar storm in 1989. But I can appreciate that other countries exist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
@@frasercain Thanks for taking the time to reply Fraser. Much appreciated. And yes, I do realise you know your geography. Criticism intended only in good humour. Your channel is always informative and well worth watching. Many thanks. P.S. I know you're Canadian, right?
really love this space bites fracer, keep it coming
So what is their bucket 🪣 list for Mars.
2:20 yea but if something goes wrong and it fails, we will have to wait for another 20-30 years until another Titan mission.
The problem with the analogy of the Sun / CMB is that we have a much better understanding of the light coming from the Sun than from the CMB. After all, if you mis-guess the level of CMB then your shadows will have more or less information in them.
How can you see an invisible gas?