I gave a talk at the Calgary session of TEDx on April 1, 2011 and lunar exploration formed an aspect of my talk, I hope you enjoy it.
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MS, nuclear engineering, University of Tennessee, 2014,
Flibe Energy, president, 2011-present,
Teledyne Brown Engineering, chief nuclear technologist, 2010-2011,
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, aerospace engineer, 2000-2010,
MS, aerospace engineering, Georgia Tech, 1999
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Kirk,
Thanks for the link to the TEDx talk! I had been wondering about the idea of doing LFTRs on the Moon. I guess you’d still need to send up “starter fuel” for each reactor, but being able to get the sustaining fuel locally would be great.
~Jon
Is a thorium LFTR sufficiently simple that one could imagine producing one strictly from lunar materials? How feasible would this be if no assistance were available from Earth?
Hey, NASA seems to have opened its collective eyes on propellant depots.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/nasa-looking-build-gas-stations-space
Just in case you missed it.
Re: NASA prop depot Request for Proposals.
Suggested price range is $200-300m. Dual-cryo only. NoI’s by tomorrow, Proposals by May 23rd. That seems a short time to design, even in basic terms, a $200+ million mission. Is that unusual?
RfP PDF.
(Jon’s somewhat busy, so I’m not expecting a post about it.)
Paul,
As I understand it (from the few moments I’ve had to look at it), this contract is for a *study* to figure out how to do this sort of mission for that price range. This is probably for a 6-12month effort, my guess. I could be wrong.
~Jon