https://nitter.1d4.us/NASAJPL/status/1669056455901851648
Great filter critics: :picard-excited:
Great filter adherents :blob-on-fire:
https://nitter.1d4.us/NASAJPL/status/1669056455901851648
Great filter critics: :picard-excited:
Great filter adherents :blob-on-fire:
The only reason people will be sending probes or even building bases on Enceladus in the next century or two would be research. Lots of cool stuff we could learn from there. If it has an ocean that goes super deep then maaaaaybe it could be mined for uranium? I'm just spitballing.
I figure by the time we're able to build a base on Enceladus we'll have fusion, and hydrogen is basically free, plenty of places to get fuel without having to drill through miles of ice and then haul it through an ocean like 3x as deep as Earth's
Fission fuels can be used for thermoelectric generators (low energy, usually very simple, lasts a very long time, used for deep space probes) as well as "small" reactors that can fit in vehicles or power a town. Fusion requires such high energies so the reactor designs are very big and the prospects for miniaturization are low. Cities will probably be powered by fusion one day, but I'm confident fission will continue to have a healthy niche.
Yeah, fair. I would expect fusion to be substantially miniaturized from current designs by the time anyone is thinking about going to enceladus, since that's probably like a century or two off, but I can definitely imagine a world where that isn't the case.
Thermoelectric generators aren't actually fission reactors, but they're crazy cheap and ideal for space travel because they require almost 0 upkeep