Musings

According to the laws of physics, all of the earth’s heavy metals should have sunk to the planet’s interior, with the densest elements such as Uranium residing at the core. Very little should have been found in the earth’s crust, and hydrothermal transport and plate tectonics really can’t account for the rich ore bodies that we currently mine today.

This makes a good case for the hypothesis that these ore deposits are the direct result of asteroids and comets impacting the earth in the distant past. A similar theory has been advanced for the near-surface petroleum deposits that fuel modern society.

The exhaustion of these resources presents a danger for our future every bit as urgent as that of global climate change. It follows that our advance as a global civilization can only be maintained by replenishing these resources from outer space.

I read this week that Russia is working on a nuclear rocket that it hopes will facilitate rapid and less expensive transit of humans and robots from the earth to the outer reaches of the solar system. I applaud this development as, in my estimation, it is the only power system that makes sense, given the vast distances to be crossed and the diminutive power that will be available from the sun near the orbits of the asteroid belt and the gas giant planets such as Jupiter.

It is in these outer reaches that rich sources of our vital hydrocarbons and heavy metals will be found in nearly unlimited quantities.

In 1960, NASA and the AEC created the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office to manage project Rover/NERVA. In the following decade, it oversaw a series of reactor tests: Kiwi-A, Kiwi-B, Phoebus, Pewee, and the Nuclear Furnace, all conducted by Los Alamos to prove concepts and test advanced nuclear propulsion ideas.

Aerojet and Westinghouse tested their own series: NRX-A2 (NERVA Reactor Experiment), A3, EST (Engine System Test), A5, A6, and XE-Prime (Experimental Engine). All were tested at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station at the AEC's Nevada Test Site, in Jackass Flats, Nevada, about 100 miles west of Las Vegas. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Nixon Administration cut NASA and NERVA funding dramatically.

The cutbacks were made in response to a lack of public interest in human spaceflight, the end of the space race after the Apollo Moon landing, and the growing use of low-cost unmanned, robotic space probes. Eventually NERVA lost its funding, and the project ended in 1973.

We have a lot of catching up to do, and the politicians in Washington have foolishly spent our future on banking bailouts and schemes to keep our outmoded industries afloat. In 2004, NASA proposed Project Prometheus, and the Nuclear Space Initiative. The programs would have developed new types of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), as well as performed research on nuclear propulsion.
But they were shot down by politicians blinded by their own home state pork barrel projects, and by rabid and ignorant civilian organizations such as The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, based in Gainesville, Florida.

Sometime ago, I made a post herein titled ‘Keeping things in perspective’. You can find it here: Perspective

Had the trillion-dollar deficit been applied to the development and implementation of long-range plans for the sustainable expansion of space exploration and the human occupation of our solar system, we might have been in a position to truly re-mediate all of earth’s environmental problems by the beginning of the next century.

And, the deficit would have surely been repaid in short order, rather than becoming a lingering millstone around the necks of our children and our children’s children.

New and unimaginable industries would have arisen to replace the archaic system we have today, and the future of mankind would have likely been assured. But, given our lack of foresight, we are now faced with widespread poverty and the rationing of diminishing resources for the foreseeable future.

And, no defensive system for the inevitable future bombardment of earth by more asteroids and comets from outer space.


A nuclear rocket engine. The fuel could be hydrogen or a variety of other gases, and would greatly reduce the fuel required as well as have a higher specific impulse than existing rocket engines. The hydrogen is plentiful in the solar system, and could be derived from frozen water in nearby comets and asteroids, as well as the surface of the Moon.