I understand why someone might find a potential technical issue in a very technical story distracting or an issue worth mentioning, I just thought the language choice of referring to the entirety of Part 2 as "disappointing" a bit much and little rude.
A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster
- Thread starter nixonshead
- Start date
Ry01tank
Banned
Its like the Martian where Matt Damon walks around like he is on Earth, its the one nitpick i have and its so minor i don't care, but some people were annoyed at that
They did try to test ways to film looking like Matt was in 1/3rd G, but it would cause issues in filming so it was dropped, the rigging would limit where Matt could walk and would essentially cause nearly every HAB scene to require pre planned movements and eliminate flexibility through improvization of movement
I meant that any reactor will still be reactive even if it is scramed, the normal decay of uranium and plutonium will still occur, just to far less levels then the reactor being active
Earthside reactors can be fully shut down, though the work is intensive and the rods and reactor material still give off radiation, Chernobyl took a few years to allow people to explore the inside
We are talking about the SOVIET UNION here, they were not exactly models for safe
We simply do not know 100 percent what happened inside the reactor, only Nixonshead can say, my theory is my best guess that fits into the details we know of the reactor
It's a fair point that the final part leaned far more into dramatic storytelling than technical rigour, and the radiation effects were not calculated from a detailed engineering analysis, more a finger-in-the-air, based on my (possibly flawed) understanding of how nuclear reactors work in a space context. In particular:
I'm sorry to hear it detracted from your enjoyment of the rest of the story.
- The reactor is not heavily radioactive on launch, until first activation
- When running, it's very radioactive
- After shut-down, the core remains highly radiatactive, and the unsheilded structure around it low-to-moderately radioactive from neutron activation
- The whole thing is radioactive enough that it causes considerable concern when scattered over large parts of Canada.
I'm sorry to hear it detracted from your enjoyment of the rest of the story.
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Well that's also situational since Technical Journals always made the top 5 on Scotty's reading list on the Enterprise
Randy
Ry01tank
Banned
Even if you look at Chernobyl the radiation levels significantly decreased when the New Safe Confinement was finished, though due to the fact radiation is absorbed by stuff the radiation is slightly above normal and certain areas and things contain higher concentrations
A unprotected nuclear reactor with NO BIOLOGICAL SHIELD (besides a plate to protect astronauts) would be significantly contaminated to the point that even 4 months later it would still kill somebody within a certian amout of time, the Cosmonaut would likely have to work next to it for atleast 30 minutes to an hour, which would lower his lifespan alot
Plus to completely shut down the Reactor might be impossible in space, a Cold Shutdown is possible on earth and takes time to complete, in space the Reactor might not be able to completely shut down, and the reaction will still continue even at minimal levels, so essentially it is still giving off radiation, just not as much from the reactor
A unprotected nuclear reactor with NO BIOLOGICAL SHIELD (besides a plate to protect astronauts) would be significantly contaminated to the point that even 4 months later it would still kill somebody within a certian amout of time, the Cosmonaut would likely have to work next to it for atleast 30 minutes to an hour, which would lower his lifespan alot
Plus to completely shut down the Reactor might be impossible in space, a Cold Shutdown is possible on earth and takes time to complete, in space the Reactor might not be able to completely shut down, and the reaction will still continue even at minimal levels, so essentially it is still giving off radiation, just not as much from the reactor
1. You could touch an unshielded reactor's fuel before activation and have no problems.
2. Yes.
3. It remains highly radioactive for a good while, but soon-ish loses the extremely high doses of radiation from the fast decaying isotopes, then medium term like a year, loses even more of its radiation, leaving only the slow decaying (and less radioactive) isotopes. Space reactors are surrounded by a neutron shield, in some cases even the coolant that leaves the reactor has a neutron reflector/shield as transportation pipe.
4. Everything mildly radioactive is a concern, even if a dose doesn't kill in a day, the concern is in regards to cumulative effects of long exposure and environmental contamination.
Uh... so you based the station's reactor (and the safety of it) on a reactor and reactor design from the 60s that would have never been used on a space station? The BES-5 (Buk) thermoelectric reactor used on the Kosmos satellites was an interim design since the beginning, to be later replaced by a safer, more powerful and more ambitious thermionic design.
If anything, the space station's reactor will be completely different from the BES-5 reactor because, OTL, if not the Topol (Topaz I), at least the Enisy reactor (Topaz II) was actually considered for a moon base reactor. It also would have used Hall effect thrusters for altitude control.
My issue with the story arc is that it goes wrong for the sake of going wrong, throwing away Soviet safety and test standards. For example, in the case of the Topaz reactor, while the US would build a few test articles and do a lot of stress analysis through mathematical means, the Soviets built more than 30 functional reactors that they tested to failure, their designs were also safer as it involved no moving parts and even now you can find articles about the Topaz II reactor's still outstanding safety.
It also uses less fuel than the BES-5 reactor, produces more power and operates for longer. 6 kW for 5 years is well within the scope of a 1 ton reactor, add 3.5 tons of shielding to protect the crew doing maintenance and 0.5 t for the fuel and the Hall and chemical thrusters for altitude control.
And that's just for a small satellite, not for a space station with crew onboard that might have to do maintenance on the reactor. You pointed out the Kosmos-954 incident, but forget that they launched successfully 29 such satellites and only had 2 failures after they started to get lax. That would never have happened with a first of its kind station reactor, maybe down the road but not the first example which would have been verified and individually tested a dozen times before actually launching the damn thing. (Though I honestly doubt they would have launched the whole thing in one go with the station, not only because it is unsafe but, if looking at slightly later reactor designs for manned stations by the Russians in the early and late 90s they would have approached something like 10-22 tons to be launched separately from a Proton or Angara rocket so I am unsure if they would have even considered a 5 ton reactor)
There's also the issue of this urgency that in 1 year it will fall back to Earth, but at an altitude where the station is situated (at 350-450 km) it will take, worse case 2-3 years for the reactor to deorbit. More than enough time to create an autonomous tug to push it at a higher orbit. (Though there would have been no reason for the thrusters to fail, as this reactor would have had multiple redundancies)
Another thing that was not mentioned was the US response to the nuclear powered station, were they trying to push for a faster development of the SP100 reactor? (Which was approved OTL in 1983) A return to the mostly finished SNAP 50 reactor? Or pursue a scaled down, 10 kW SP100 variant?
Just a couple of minor clarifications on the incident itself:
- The reactor didn't go wrong, the re-orbit booster went wrong. The reactor worked fine.
- It didn't go wrong for the sake of going wrong. It went wrong for the sake of a dramatic finale
Which is another can of worms as the chances of the booster falling for this extremely important mission are astronomical. Like I said, future missions that start to get lax have a higher likelihood of failure as seen OTL.Just a couple of minor clarifications on the incident itself:
- The reactor didn't go wrong, the re-orbit booster went wrong. The reactor worked fine.
- It didn't go wrong for the sake of going wrong. It went wrong for the sake of a dramatic finale
I am not sure how the booster would even fail, because it will have a dozen contingencies, Hall thrusters, hypergolic thrusters and duplicate systems. It is also probable that, before they would decouple the reactor they would test the systems to see if they work.
Yes, but they need a response to the Soviet nuclear powerplant, Skylab could benefit from the SNAP 50 for example as that was intended for a space station.
Just a couple of minor clarifications on the incident itself:
On the US reaction, they were developing in space nuclear reactors, and likely planned to use them as part of TTL's SDI, but none have flown by the end of Part 2. NASA was also studying them for use on the Moon as part of the extended Freedom program. They weren't considering them for space stations, because NASA had no space station project beyond Skylab-B (although it gets a mention, along with nuclear ferries, in their pitch “America’s Future in Space: The Manned Spaceflight Initiative”).
- The reactor didn't go wrong, the re-orbit booster went wrong. The reactor worked fine.
- It didn't go wrong for the sake of going wrong. It went wrong for the sake of a dramatic finale
The high radioactivity of the pieces of Kosmos-954 were after it broke apart and hit the ground. It's unclear from how the wiki worded it, but some of the more radioactive pieces might have literally been fragments of the fuel itself. In-space it has a neutron shield around it, so the pieces of the reactor and surrounding equipment outside that shield would not get neutron activated and would not be radioactive. After several months, up to about half a year, all but the slow-decaying and not very radioactive isotopes are gone. At that point you can work on the reactor for a while and not have any major problems from radiation exposure.
The only way it’s possible for that not to be true is if the reactor malfunctioned. So yes, it was a reactor failure, not a booster failure. And that makes no sense given as Nell_Lucifer pointed out the Soviets did take their reactor safety seriously and were better at that than the US were in many important respects, especially in testing. It seems counterintuitive, but remember this isn’t the same team of people that built the reactors for Chernobyl and other civilian ground-based nuclear plants, this is a team of aerospace engineers working for their space program, and they have very different methodologies and safety standards.
Ultimately, the problem is that this incident simply couldn’t happen like this IRL. Which is an issue, because while it’s very dramatic and cool, it’s also a massive pivotal moment in this timeline. After this event all space-based nuclear power is dead, for decades at least, maybe forever. If the people at NASA roll several natural 20s in a row over the next few years they may just barely be able to scrape by convincing congress that they should be allowed to fly RTGs at least, but that’s very doubtful and probably won’t happen, which will have massive implications. Any probes going beyond Saturn or so are now a non-starter because you can’t get enough power for them through solar cells. And nuclear thermal propulsion will never be a thing again, ever, nor will nuclear electric. Public opinion in the US simply won’t allow it. In OTL there were massive protests against launching RTGs on several spacecraft, notably the Voyagers and Cassini among others, ITTL that will equate to legislation being passed banning it. The Soviet-bloc countries are authoritarian and don’t care about public opinion so they might be able to get away with it though, but even that’s somewhat dubious.
Point is, this is an insanely pivotal moment in the story with massive, far-reaching implications, and yet it’s not based in reality in any meaningful way. It’s fine to abandon realism for the sake of drama when it’s not that impactful to the overall story, but when the entire course of the timeline hinges on something that breaks the laws of physics, well, that should be posted in the ASB section, not here. Of course, one could simply handwave it and say that somehow this doesn't result in space-based nuclear power being banned in the US, but then that’s even more of a reality break and definitely belongs in ASB. So, yeah, it’s kinda understandable why some would find this disappointing.
Anyway, that aside, everything else that’s happened so far other than the nuclear stuff was really good, so I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes! And sorry if this came across as overly confrontational or something, I didn't intend for that. I might be getting slightly stressed out because this is reminding me a lot of the discourse around Voyage and the incident in that book, admittedly. The story is still really good, and I do enjoy reading it.
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Not to dog pile in on the discussion, but yeah apart from everything else in the timeline, the failure of the booster for all intents and purposes seemed at bit too "out there", this combined with the fact that the nuclear reactor design itself is completely different to the reactors used on the Soviet satellites, along with the fact that the Soviets had absolutely no reason to get complacent and not design enough redundancies in case of this exact incident happening.Just a couple of minor clarifications on the incident itself:
On the US reaction, they were developing in space nuclear reactors, and likely planned to use them as part of TTL's SDI, but none have flown by the end of Part 2. NASA was also studying them for use on the Moon as part of the extended Freedom program. They weren't considering them for space stations, because NASA had no space station project beyond Skylab-B (although it gets a mention, along with nuclear ferries, in their pitch “America’s Future in Space: The Manned Spaceflight Initiative”).
- The reactor didn't go wrong, the re-orbit booster went wrong. The reactor worked fine.
- It didn't go wrong for the sake of going wrong. It went wrong for the sake of a dramatic finale
And while the the purpose of the disaster was to make the end of Part 2 dramatic, I still don't like the fact that any form of nuclear power in space has been effectively killed off forever in the timeline.
I use in 2001: A Space Time Odyssey, Nuclear engines NERVA and Serpent, next nuclear powert Ion engines
i took this design for NASA Reusable Nuclear Ferry (RNF)
Using internal 10 ft. diameter cylinder tanks ended up providing better radiation shielding.
Plus a radiation shield composed of a polyethylene foam block was placed on top part of the main hydrogen tank.
Serving the RNF happens by SpaceTug (chemical) mostly under remote Control special maintain the NERVA engine
Refuel and Cargo dock are do unmanned (the Space shuttle is 50 km away from RNF inside shadow of radiation shielding.
special if manned mission to GEO, Moon or Mars .
After each use the RNF cooled down in radiation term before refuel and Serving the NERVA.
In TL had soviets a serious Nuclear accident with there NERVA engine and went for Ion engine
There Aelta Spacecraft for Mars have there reactors on long radiators behind to two radiation shield, at distance 100 meter from Habitat module.
The Serpent used in 1990s is game changer
Nuclear reactor is encapsulate in the cooling system of liquid lithium as main radiation shield
its heat transfer by Helium loop to Hydrogen and power turbine for electric power
Last one power Arc jet engine that supercharge the hot Hydrogen
This engine far less radioactive as NERVA, since Hydrogen is heated indirect by reactor.
i took this design for NASA Reusable Nuclear Ferry (RNF)
Using internal 10 ft. diameter cylinder tanks ended up providing better radiation shielding.
Plus a radiation shield composed of a polyethylene foam block was placed on top part of the main hydrogen tank.
Serving the RNF happens by SpaceTug (chemical) mostly under remote Control special maintain the NERVA engine
Refuel and Cargo dock are do unmanned (the Space shuttle is 50 km away from RNF inside shadow of radiation shielding.
special if manned mission to GEO, Moon or Mars .
After each use the RNF cooled down in radiation term before refuel and Serving the NERVA.
In TL had soviets a serious Nuclear accident with there NERVA engine and went for Ion engine
There Aelta Spacecraft for Mars have there reactors on long radiators behind to two radiation shield, at distance 100 meter from Habitat module.
The Serpent used in 1990s is game changer
Nuclear reactor is encapsulate in the cooling system of liquid lithium as main radiation shield
its heat transfer by Helium loop to Hydrogen and power turbine for electric power
Last one power Arc jet engine that supercharge the hot Hydrogen
This engine far less radioactive as NERVA, since Hydrogen is heated indirect by reactor.
Well it's not as if this hasn't happened before (**coughStevenBaxter/Voyagecough**) for dramatic story purposes
(And in fact Baxter is VERY tired of hearing how his scenario is impossible
)Failures happen, no matter how hard you try and engineer them out. While I agree this is highly implausible it's for the sake of the story NOT to stain atomic energy development. (Will also point out that Soviet "Safety and Test Standards" still resulted in Chernobyl)
Randy
Yes, failures happen, but not on the first attempt after decades of research and caution and probably human sacrifices for everything to go right. I agreed that there's a possibility for such an accident... but after a dozen successes that see regulations and quality control become lax.
Comparing apples to oranges, different teams and institutions with different work ethics, procedures and safety standards. And the Chernobyl reactor is an older design that was also supposed to work as a weapon manufacturing plant in case of need.
yes, ambitious engineer screw massiv up and let to major meltdown of reactor...
Craig
Banned
I can understand the nit-picking when discussing an actual historical event or operation, like the order of battle of the American invasion force on Saipan in June 1944. But to nit-pick a story of an imagined event that has zero historical reality, you have, de-facto, decided that you're smarter than the Author and maybe you should be writing the story and not him.
It's a story.
It's a story.
It's a story in the after-1900 section of the forums. If someone wanted to read something unrealistic they would go to the ASB section. There is a certain assumption made when a reader clicks on a timeline in the post-1900 section that it will follow the laws of physics and be physically possible. It’s okay if some minor aspects of a timeline are unrealistic for dramatic effect, if they don’t have much impact overall. But when a major, completely timeline-altering event in a non-ASB timeline is physically impossible, it’s understandable that some subset of the readers would find that disappointing. Perhaps not enough to demand the mods move it to the ASB section, depending on how severely unrealistic it is, but it can be disappointing to some nonetheless. Personally I'm more or less okay with it, but I sympathize with those who aren't, because it is such a timeline-defining moment and it would have been nicer if it was tackled with the same technical rigor as everything else was.
The author literally said in their own words that:
The relative smartness of everyone involved is irrelevant, because even if the author was the smartest person in the world when it comes to their knowledge of nuclear power systems, they've explicitly stated that they made a decision to not use that knowledge. Which is why when people who do chose to use that knowledge like Nell_Lucifer come along they find the scene was very unrealistic. It’s not because someone is smarter than someone else. It’s because someone deliberately chose to not do the math. Which would be fine if this was an ASB story, but it isn’t.
I still really like the story anyway, to be clear, I’m just trying to explain why some people might not, or why they might still like it but also be disappointed in it.
While I have never been one to approve of drama for its own sake..., I must admit I found the finale to be thrilling and poignant. Fine work all around.
- It didn't go wrong for the sake of going wrong. It went wrong for the sake of a dramatic finale