SPACE NUCLEAR SCIENCE with STEVE HOWE

By Bruce Behrhorst

 

   Transition...Transition seems to be the operative word around NASA at the moment.

 NASA centers are under increased scrutiny, programs and the people that run them find themselves in a state flux many have moved to the private sector, some simply "let go", others transferred and still others have retired. All this under a melee of an embattled President Bush who has seen his political fortunes evaporate as polls might suggest. Still, as consolation, the president can claim under his tenure a realization NASA a budgetary challenged agency needed some reforming. And that meant many in the agency would see systematic changes in space launch systems important keys to access space.
Politically the president lost resonance with the public on issues such as; the nagging war in Iraq, trade imbalance with China and India, lack of educational resources (No Child Left Behind Act) the high cost of gasoline, alternative fuels like nuclear hydrogen co-generation still not available to consumers, legality of Iran's uranium enrichment program violating guidelines in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This international drama examined through a prism with a wider field of view is in reality a question of efficient and affordable energy for everyone involved.
Domestic issues for the President, again, never received traction as evidenced by the slow behavior of government when disastrous hurricanes struck the Gulf States. Past presidents paid more attention to national emergency relief at least insure his party present a good chance with some semblance of contest in the next election cycle. As is customary a change in political party governance means NASA would again change to reflect the incoming vagaries of the new political power in Washington. Which could create instability at the space agency at top managerial levels. One veteran observer of NASA once suggested if NASA were truly looking for the public's support for its programs it would insure major infrastructure missions be launched to coincide with federal election cycles (every two years), meaning numerous launches scheduled to impress constituents that accountability at NASA was being fulfilled.

MEDIA SHORTFALL DISEMINATING THE SPACE STORY

Press people really do get it wrong at times. An embarrassing moment came during a televised press conference after the launching of the New Horizons Mission which just witnessed a successful launch of an RTG power source mission with its Pu-238 fuel onboard to a 10 year transit to Pluto and the near outer reaches of our solar system. Areas in the solar system where not many 'proximity of presence' missions have flown too. As is customary a press conference was scheduled with NASA Director, Griffin and naturally the Director would brief the press on mission information and what had just transpired, but the press from its line of questioning would have none of that; as if the Director is responsible for setting public perception of the space agency. The press should recognize that is not his job, but a task for a press to set public perception and the lack of perception that continues to neglect its responsibility to create a true positive public perception of a nuclear powered space mission. Instead the interest was directed toward a contentious issue of launch platforms and preparations made toward transition from an old launch (Shuttle) system and access into space -vs- new launch platforms CEV/Heavy Lift. Never mind that less members of protests groups and protestors opposed to nuclear space power showed up at launch time compared to past protest toward launches of missions in the nuclear category . A low turnout to protest in part is based on the group's ideas to instill catastrophe and false science claims that space nuclear systems cause world cancer. Missed by media press on reporting the space story is in large part due to short staffing for those that do investigative space stories and editors that are more concerned with "bottom line" online publishing of 'splash' (contentious) stories since these 'ad linked page' stories bring advertising dollar revenue.

Can rapacious stories about space and space policy actually co-exist with space science and accurate investigative reporting on space?

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH TAKES THE LEAD

The emphasis for space reactor development and research has shifted away from sole participation of Naval Research (NR) and it made more sense to pick from organizations that have been involved in research and development such as academia, government labs and private industry. But a major roadblock to nuclear space science is funding for programs and incentives that keep scientist, engineers and students attracted to the craft in the R&D and manufacturing of space nuclear reactors for the future in viable in-space propulsion and power systems. If it weren't the on again, off again program of support so comical to suggest a paltry amount of funding dedicated to nuclear space science research and development at NASA despite its lack of proper official funding; dedicated people in the field still endure and carry on important work.
One such group offering educational resources in the field of space nuclear technology is the Center For Space Nuclear Research (CSNR) with offices in Idaho Falls, Idaho it's managed by the Universities Space Research Association which is an association of 97 universities chartered for the development of knowledge associated with space science and technology. In collaboration with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) CSNR will provide a focus to engage university scientists and students on research and development of advanced space nuclear systems including space power, propulsion systems and radioisotope power generators. CSNR will be creating opportunities for university researchers to collaborate with counterparts at NASA, INL and other DOE Labs with industry on projects and initiatives that advance nuclear technologies for space exploration and other space applications. CSNR research will cover both nuclear and non-nuclear elements and related sub-disciplines like material science, nucleonics, heat transfer, thermofluidynamics, structures, systems engineering, testing and diagnostics etc.

I had a chance to interview its first Director Dr. Steven Howe as it offered its Summer Fellowship Program in 2006.

BB: It's a pleasure to talk with Dr. Steven Howe well known personality in the space nuclear community. Dr Howe is well versed in nuclear space science having received his doctorate at Kansas State University besides being CSNR's first Director he is also co-founder of Hbar technologies, Hbar develops a low source of antiproton use for a variety of commercial applications including homeland defense and medical treatments for two decades he has been employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) among other interests are antiproton physics and applications, nuclear rocket propulsion, hyper-velocity aerodynamics and thermodynamics and non-equilibrium X-ray emission. Author of the adventure novel "Honor Bound , Honor Born" among other adventure stories. He has also appeared on numerous TV programs including: “Living and Working in Space,” PBS and Sci-Fi Channel; “Mission to Mars,” Ultra Science, the Learning Channel; “Rocketships,” Discovery Channel (June ’98); “Rockets in Space,” Wingspan (August ’98); and “Voyage to the Milky Way,” PBS, May ’99.

Now that I have the chance to talk with you Dr. Howe. Could we revisit this question, I asked before? Could you give us a mission purpose and an update on CSNR? I know you said, "It's to facilitate and promote research into nuclear technologies for space exploration."

SH: Exactly...The goal of the center is two fold, it is to act as an intermediary between NASA and the university community and also between the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and NASA. The purpose is to establish a mechanism where we can get some research monies from NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) into university research projects for nuclear technology for space exploration. Some of them [projects] may utilize the facilities of the Idaho National Lab-or may not. In essence what we want to establish is a 'pipeline', if you will, of funding that goes to research communities and universities nation wide not just in the region.

BB: Could you explain a bit about this year's first Summer Fellowship Program at CSNR? Isn't the program to begin this month?

SH: Should begin in a week or so. What this entails CSNR will host 14 students, two students will work on risk analysis for nuclear systems in space exploration whether that be ground based testing or launch or actual mission operations. Four of the students will actually be supporting INL staff in the fabrication of advanced refractory materials potentially for use as nuclear rocket fuels. We are now very interested in a Tungsten (W) matrix called "Tungsten-Cermet"(W-cermet). Which is a W-Rhenium metal and interspersed in the metal is Uranium Dioxide UO2 using it as a fuel instead of the graphite based fuels used in the ROVER/NERVA program in the sixties.

BB: I'm pleasantly surprised. Since I wrote an online article making light of the Pratt & Whitney "Triton" Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) engine's use of W-cermet technology. Apparently you also support INL staff in risk analysis and human factor accessment and operate as part of a team to evaluate performance of the nuclear thermal rocket in supporting Lunar outposts.

SH: That's the third category. So we have some[students] working on risk analysis, some will be involved in fuel fabrication they will actually be making materials and then the third group that's 8 out of the 14 will be doing an accessment of two different scenarios. Both of which I should say, are geared toward the Lunar outpost, by that I mean 6 people on the Lunar surface for six months as a prelude to a Mars Mission. Given the masses required for a Lunar outpost we are going to do a cost comparison. If you supplied that mass to the Lunar surface using a nuclear rocket from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit -vs- a chemical rocket being developed now for the initial Lunar architecture.
So first scenario, in essence we want to show if you use an NTR you will save enough money in launch costs alone to pay for the NTR. Clearly investing in an NTR gives you the rest of the solar system. It gives you rapid Mars missions, it gives you missions to the Asteroid belt and it gives you faster science missions to the outer planets. So we want to do these cost comparisons.

The second scenario will be to say,

"If you really want a Lunar outpost from a business perspective you would do it much differently you would say, what resources do I have, how do I use them, and what do I have build to fill in the gaps." We have a significant launch capability in the world already. We have a space station that we spent around 80 billion dollars to make. So why don't we use it? There's kind of a logic here. That says, "No matter how big a heavy launch vehicle you make to get off the Earth's surface you'll eventually come up against missions that require payloads bigger than it. So you're always constraining yourself. If on the other hand; you build the infrastructure and use whatever launch capability you have and assume you're going to assemble ships at the space station you can make as big a ship as you want.
And so it's a different logical path that says, lets utilize the launch fleet we've got, let's utilize the station as an assembly point. The reason that's not attractive for the Moon and you wouldn't do it now is because it's in such a high inclination orbit that it takes a major amount of propellant to get back to an equatorial plane to go to the Moon if you want to. But for the Nuclear Rocket that's not a big penalty.
So... the second scenario again is, use the launch fleet you've got to get off the [Earth's] surface, use the ISS as an assembly point and use the nuclear rocket to go to the moon and we'll do that cost comparison with the chemical system... also. So those are the two studies we're going to do this summer.

BB: I realize you speak for a nuclear-centric in-space program. And I share your ideas. But how do you convince people in positions of power at NASA who see no value in any nuclear activity in space particularly at L1 or L2 or at LEO? In fact technologies in the space nuclear field have been roundly criticized for its use in space. For example, the NEP (nuclear electrical propulsion) JIMO project that should have been facilitated with NTR thrust propulsion. But mission 'evaluators' 'panned' the mission based on improper thrust requirements knowing that NTR was available and would have facilitated thrust prerequisites for mission design and planning . This was one exploratory mission with 'high priority' destinations that could have demonstrated the credibility of nuclear propulsion, but was never given a chance to fly the mission. How do you persuade cynics & critics that nuclear type infrastructure is necessary?

SH: There were several questions there... First of all, JIMO was ill conceived.

I was on the National Research Council (NRC) committee to look at missions enabled by nuclear propulsion power. Actually the title was changed to, "Priorities in Space Science Enabled by Nuclear Power and Propulsion" and that just came out (published). Part of the problem with the JIMO craft was it didn't satisfy the need of the customer which was to get there quickly to get the science done . Instead it was going to cost 17 billion dollars would get there slower than a chemical system. And was not usable for missions beyond that if you wanted to get some first science in 20 years.
So I think ...

BB: NEP designers were using Hall Thrusters, Ion Thrusters that left the impression had very little thrust enough to carry off a mission platform of that mass within a decent arrival time to destination.

SH: That's right...the fundamental problem with NEP is that it is very inefficient. Something like 15% of the power generated in the reactor makes it into thrust and the rest you have to "throw away". You have to throw it away with big radiator fins and that makes it very heavy and so it's quite a difficult system. Now, with nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) you got 95% of the thermal power in the reactor going out the nozzle and it's very efficient. Now , admittedly they didn't consider the NTR as the first stage for JIMO, had they done so it would have been far more practical.

BB: It would have been saved.

SH: Possibly. There's a certain community at NASA headquarters that I think was misinformed they seem to feel that NTR was extremely expensive, would take a long time to get developed and couldn't be in the timetable of interest.

I think that was incorrect. In fact if you think of a JIMO ship itself costing 17 billion dollars I'm very confident we can build an NTR for under that.

BB: That was always the issue. I don't understand why the situation arrived to that conclusion. I would think people representing the NTR option would have been more forward in their argument to use NTR or maybe they were never listened to.

SH: If you think about it. Think about the structural activity at NASA over the last two decades they've been funding some major work in electrical propulsion for twenty years at both JPL and at NASA-Glenn. So in essence they've invested in that technology and have a much larger advocacy force for that technology. They went in and essentially made the case to use it, where there's not as strong an advocacy force for the Nuclear Thermal Rocket. No NASA center has been working on NTR except for NASA-Glenn for twenty years.

BB: Recently there had been news reports NASA-Glenn as a center was being re-evaluated as 'relevant'...Is that true?

SH: Well...there had been some re-arrangement of budgets and NASA-Glenn is one of the smaller centers and was heavily aeronautics and in the "New Vision for Space" aeronautics has suffered some budget cuts. It's restructuring the administrator Dr. Woodrow Whitlow Jr. at NASA-Glenn just reorganized and actually created a nuclear power and propulsion office in its organizational structure. That's a positive step.

BB: Do you assist with the new nuclear power and propulsion office at NASA-Glenn?

SH: I'm in communication with them all the time. I'm certainly not organizing their center, but I think we are making some headway with NASA. I believe NASA headquarters now recognizes nuclear rockets are needed for humans to Mars. They simply consider it for [year] 2030 and beyond and wouldn't need to send money on it yet. What we're trying to do is to convince them that if you want a human rated NTR in 2030 you're going to have some number lets say, 6-to-10 space flights prior to that to know your reliability. So that means as your first flight some where around 2020, 2018 in order to be ready there with the current budget you need to kinda get started in 2010, 2011 time frame. Past studies we have done have said; we can recover the nuclear rocket in about 5-7 years on the order of 2.5 to 3 billion dollars. Now, that included a major surface test facility capable of scrubbing NTR exhaust.

BB: Is there wide government agency and corporate participation in R&D of the NTR?

SH: This will have participation from all the DOE labs, two or three of the NASA centers, and a heavy chunk of industry. This isn't just INL (Idaho National Lab) doing this, this is the program. This sets the scale, you've got to be able to will over a 7 to 10 year period to put in the 2 to 3 billion dollars...that's not too bad that's 200 million. The current recovery of the CLV (Crew Launch Vehicle) is over 10 billion that's just chemical solid rockets, look at CALV that gonna be over 10 billion. So to say, we can't build a nuclear engine for two billion is kinda being silly when you're willing to send 10 billion on a big 'Estes Rocket'. You gotta kinda set the scale a little bit. And so what we're trying to show then is, if that's you're time scale then you might as well, build the NTR to support the Lunar base that lets you develop your margins and reliability make it human rated and it also saves you money. Because you're launch costs now have been significantly reduced. So... that's our reasoning....to show that it's beneficial from purely a financial standpoint.

BB: Just how successful is CSNR in having once 'black projects' de-classified in order to form a pre-eminent space nuclear curriculum.

SH: At this point everything on nuclear rocket is unclassified that's the guidance from DOE.

So, everything is available. Now, there are some ITAR issues as far as if you have foreign nationals that you're going to be teaching. But that's mostly in the reactor design area. We have to be careful about that. But no, we think we have access to all the information from ROVER/NERVA even TIMBERWIND which is questionable whether you even want the information which is not clear what value it has to recover anything. We're probably going to go back and argue to recover ROVER/NERVA design and just substitute the W-cremet fuel and try to run and fly a different reactor.

One of the things I should mention; is ground testing. We think we have potentially a concept that will reduce costs making operations much cheaper.

BB: Are you quoting from your paper on "Ground Testing"? [view here]

SH: Yea, if we can prove that it takes ground testing down into the 10 million dollars per test level.

BB:Your paper is uncomplicated and straight forward the way you have described ground testing a nuclear rocket engine stand.

SH: Right...current thinking is you're suppose to build a surface facility that takes all that exhaust and scrubs [radioactive material] it clean. That would be about a 500 million dollar facility. Depending on the size of engine you're going to test.

BB: And were do you want to build that?

SH: Well... who knows, there would have to be an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). My concept would be to blow it down a hole at the Nevada Test Site and let the soil absorb it. In either concept if we make a Tungsten based fuel that doesn't leak fission products into the exhaust, if in fact it can inhibit the fusion of all fission products and retain it in the matrix, then your ground test facility becomes a backup facility, a catcher facility as soon as you detect anything in the exhaust you turn OFF the reactor. Suddenly, in either case whether it's the "Down-in-hole" or "Surface" type facility they are much cheaper facilities.

BB: With regard to the "Down-in-hole" type Nuclear Rocket Engine Test Stand if one already exists at the Nevada Test site caused by some previous test of a Nuclear Thermal Explosive Device for example, back in the '50's & '60's it already has a bit of radioactivity anyway. Would that bother test personnel having to work in the area?

SH: No, clearly holes that have been used aren't holes any more because they tend to collapse and form craters. There are twenty some holes that exist at the Nevada Test Site these were never used and still just sit there.

BB: So you can safely work in and around the area-no... big deal?

SH: Yea...that's nothing, it's doable. And we actually think we can prove the concept with a much smaller hole maybe a foot in diameter just to show we can shoot pressurized hydrogen down a hole and back pressure that reaches the levels we expect.
I think we can do a proof-of-concept for a couple million bucks! And if it works you have a cheap way of testing.

BB: W-cermet fuel, wasn't that sort of heavy mass fuel form tested before in an Air Force project at the time.

SH: Not in a full core. I don't believe they built a full reactor based on that fuel.

BB: I believe Pratt & Whitney company has a strong desire to move into this type of rocket technology.

SH: There were radiations [tests] done on candidate samples. I don't believe a full core with W-cermet was ever built to my understanding - I could be wrong.

BB: Would you perform a bundled test or a single fuel element test?

SH: Well...if we do the whole program we'll work our way up. First we'll do single element then clusters using electrically heated systems that are non radioactive just to locate erosion and thermodynamics.

BB: So you're following the S.A.F.E. reactor studies of the past?

SH: Exactly...then we would do a 'full-up' ground test to show that we could reach "End of Life" data. Remember the life- limiting factor in ROVER/NERVA fuel was erosion of graphite matrix. It was 'UC beads' where most of the testing was done. Then on all the flow channels you had a very thin layer of zirconium carbide and once that cracks or erodes that hydrogen seeing that raw graphite would just burn it right-up. Your lifetime was cut short having a thin layer of zirconium carbide. Where in Tungsten the matrix itself is resistant to erosion.

So, we think there's much longer life for the Tungsten-cermet fuel type of space reactor

BB: Even if you were to exhibit a 'pico' amount of exhaust radiation that shouldn't bother anyone-should it ?

SH: No...well, but you would like to stand up before the Public and state, "No fission product comes out with rocket exhaust at low earth orbit because it's clean exhaust." That's a nice categorical statement.
With the nuclear rocket -vs- the old NEP (Nuclear Electrical Propulsion) you never have an operating reactor in orbit. With a nuclear rocket once lit by the time it builds up a fission product amount in its core which is about in 10 to 15 minutes you're on your way...your gone! In a nuclear electrical system if you operate it in orbit you've got a 'red hot' reactor circling the Earth many, many times-even I object to that.

BB: There are scientists that object to nuclear space science because of a known 'hot streak' source in space 'clouding' their sensitive space science instruments.

SH: Well...it does 'screw-up' their instruments. It raises infrared background in their observatories. But there are a lot of facets of the rocket that make its useable and attractive. And we have to do some education both at NASA Headquarters and in the public so they understand what the numbers are not what people conjecture .

BB: I thought there was money set aside for that a year ago for NTR?

SH: During the JIMO period where they had Prometheus set up at around 250 million [dollars]. There was a small amount of money set-up for advanced concepts.

BB: For NTR technology?

SH: A small amount up around a million or two million bucks.

BB: So what happened to that? They must have pulled funding away-right?

SH: Well...Yea, it was spent on some studies and not much happened and then it all disappeared when the budget [NASA] went down to 10 million total.

BB: Where is the Prometheus Project now? Is NASA going to get rid of Prometheus?

SH: They are re-visiting Prometheus, as though setting the right goals for the future, how it should and could be accomplish. There has been some strategic planning meetings. Right now the Prometheus budget is set at about 10 million dollars. 25% of it is geared toward NTR and 75% of it is geared toward a Lunar surface power reactor.

BB: Ok...So now the focus is; forget JIMO, forget a flight based system. Now the 'hot' issue is a Lunar outpost power system. If that's the case, what kind of initial lunar surface nuclear reactor would you use a FAST or MODERATED (MOD) reactor? Maybe if the survey and assays missions NASA hopes to send to the moon come back with positive signs of water/ice, since they want to 'fold open' Lunar regolith by an impact blast. [view story] If they do find sizable amounts of water/ice, would designers of a space reactor use convenient Lunar H2O as a heat transfer material or coolant?

SH: That's a big step, to say you can go from water/ice on the moon to a purified water coolant.
There needs to be a lot of infrastructure to do that. Certainly for the first power plant you'd send it up as a 'box'. Now, if you were going to propagate and make a permanent settlement, then you would start to use local resources.
But you want a very nice 'black box' with two cables coming out of it that you know is going to last 7 to 10 years uninterrupted and for that you would have to send it up from here. The initial power source I would suspect will be Earth produced.

BB: Would they be looking at an SP-100?

SH: That was a liquid metal cooled system. There are some people who think that's the way to go.

BB: I ask that question because a large amount of money went towards its development.

SH: It never got to the point of proving anything. I think there are two approaches right now. One by NASA-Glenn they're going to have a few months assessment of what they call the 'affordable reactor'.

BB: You mean the S.A.F.E series. The David Poston, Heat Pipe reactor?

SH: No, it's even different than that. The argument is that the largest database for materials that we have is for a UO2 in stainless steel pins. We know how that behaves, we know its characteristics, we know how it works, we can build that with high confidence. The difficulty is it tends to run at 600 degrees C and thus the efficiency of conversion is down and the radiators tend to be large because radiator surface area has to increase in order to dump heat quickly. So the mass of the system is somewhat big. Intuitively NASA has imposed an 8 ton limit on what's permitted on the Lunar surface on a given launch. And it's not clear this reactor can meet that limit.
That's one approach that's affordable, confident, robust and we know it'll work.

BB: And what would power output be... 100kWe ?

SH: That's the target everyone has in mind 75 to 100 kWe. This has not been determined yet by any formality by any authority. If you want 100kWe it's going to be hard to do with 8 ton lunar landing limit with that reactor - we believe. Now the alternative which I have proposed to NASA-Glenn is to let Universities start looking at a reactor whose material maturity of material technology is lower, but we know the performance potential is there. So we would be looking at this UO2 in W-cermet matrix and use it as a gas cooled power reactor running at 1200 degrees C. So we know it has the ability to meet the Lunar landing mass limit since it uses much smaller radiator fin technology because the total reactor system runs hotter and heat is dumped at a faster rate, but our materials technology is not far enough along. This is a good thing for universities to look at.

BB: What would you be using as coolant?

SH: Probably just gas. A brayton cycle coolant. It could be liquid metal, that's the advantage of tungsten you can play your options. We might go back to a liquid metal coolant - I don't know that answer.

BB: You're at least taking steps toward dual use real time data using W-cermet UO2 fuel in the Lunar N-power plant.

SH: That's what's nice. If we were to design a high temperature reactor that did meet performance requirements and it used the same fuel that you can use for a rocket you've made a big leap here. You have one fuel now that does both systems and it's probably the only fuel. Certainly the stainless steel UO2 and some of the other N-fuels considered for power reactors can't do the rocket job. But rocket type N-fuel can do the power job.
Getting NASA to see this is one of our tasks. We want to form university programs around that high temperature reactor concept.

BB: Running at 1200^oK?

SH: I just 'wagged' a number there... something hot. You have to do a lot of trade studies to say how much gain you're getting for a little bit more temperature -vs- material lifetime.

BB: Which companies take an interest in this technology besides P & W?

SH: That's a short list if any. Most of the industrial community says, we don't see NASA putting much money into this topic so we're not overly interested in it at this point.
What I'm trying to do is convince them there's a major amount of effort on ground based nuclear power were there are also not very many companies that have the expertise now and they can use the space application to attract their workers and they will have a workforce available for nuclear ground based power. Right now it's P&W, Lockheed Martin, Rocketdyne, General Atomics, Arrowjet, BWXT those are the unusual suspects. These companies are waiting to see if NASA commits to nuclear space science in a big way.

BB: So the first nuclear power reactor in space would be a straight, simple, functional, and higher temperature type reactor with no add-on features like MDH or MPD ?

SH: You will want robustness and a lifetime of use. The big problem with power reactors like this is if you're going to put it on the Lunar surface, you want it to last a long time because in a sense it's not going to be easy to replace. One factor to look at is you have to stretch out power cable. You have to dig an embankment. You can't just 'plop' one down by the previous one very easy and move the cable over 'cause it costs a lot of money to replace. So, you would like to have a 7 to 10 year lifetime.
How do you establish that ??
You do a ground-based test for 7 to 10 years before you launch it ? That makes it fiscally difficult.

BB: In launching a nuclear reactor is it more expedient to have fuel away from reactor core not engaged, non-fissioning, inert, 'stone cold' encapsulated fuel at launch time. Are you looking at issues like that?

SH: That's the advantage of the Fast Reactor over Thermal Reactor. If you did have a launch abort and it fell into the ocean it won't go critical-that's a big advantage there. I think you'll have the reactor in off mode and no radioactive inventory the only thing is the uranium fuel. It's really a non-proliferation issue -vs- safety issue. And of course we don't want an abort to come down on unfriendly territory. As a safety issue it will come down as a 'chunk' (in one piece) and quickly recoverable.

BB: I wanted to touch on the Lunar deployment scenario outlined by the Houts/Poston concept from Marshall space flight using a small remotely operated 'backhoe' that doubles as a sandbag filler. Sounds interesting. [view paper ppt]

SH: That is another point of debate. There's one school that says, how hard can it be to dig a hole and put the reactor in it and pour dirt over it. The other school of thought says, no, no, that takes heavy machinery and is massive. We're going to have to put a man-made shield down around the reactor. It would be nicer to use the local material as shielding material.

BB: Couldn't you just land a motorized crate containing the reactor and move it to a crater and go down into the crater?

SH: Do you mean a natural or man made crater?

BB: A natural crater.

SH: Well, natural craters have 'lips' and edges with crumbly surfaces. You would want to make a man made crater. A lot of folks say, it's not that tough they can implant explosives either from impact or someone being there. You can build the hole to specifications. So, you have the reactor and its vehicle which would crawl down the hole and scoop some dirt around it. This would be enough shielding.

BB: I imagine astronauts would be subjected to some labor during their Lunar stay. They would have to prepare a "racked" lander containing the nuclear reactor housed in a motorized shipping crate type tracked crawler. Ready to roll and install the reactor toward its permanent N power plant site for safe operations.

SH: Hey...This could also be fully automated and controlled from Earth remotely. The NASA feeling is as soon as you mention machinery that's big, complex and expensive. They would rather land a 'crate' with the shielding built right in around it. So all it has to do is land and it's ready to operate. There is a debate going on around the issue of putting in a man made shield it would have to be equipped with a thick shield so the reactor could be closer to the base, but that would make the shield massive-that's going to be difficult.
If you put it further away and just use dirt shielding then the mass of the cable connecting the reactor goes up and as they appear to be the same mass.

BB: Is that what you're working on now with your students?

SH: We won't be looking at this problem. MIT has been studying this 'trade off' for a couple of years, as has NASA-Glenn. We also will not be looking at the power unit other than a massive unit that needs to land on the Moon. In other words we'll take the masses from NASA-HQ they think they need to plant on the surface a Lunar outpost. We then will estimate the propellant needed to go from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit to put packages down on the Lunar surface.

BB: Is Stan Borowski doing some of this work?

SH: Oh sure. Stan will be coming out this summer to help with the students. Clearly NASA-Glenn has the lead on the power reactor aspects, we take numbers from them.

BB: So NASA-Glenn will be orchestrating the Lunar nuclear power plant installation.

SH: CSNR'S job this summer is the "trucking company" we're going to show if you we're to build our 'truck' it takes half the fuel to get to the moon and it's reusable therefore, the cost saving is sufficient to warrant its development with the added benefits of being able to access the rest of the solar system.

BB: What about the Outer Space Treaty and future Lunar operations; is there a problem with the space activities CSNR would like to accomplish?

SH: I don't think so.
Nations can't own land according to the Moon treaty. But private entities can own land on the Moon. Then you get into ownership if you lay down your Lunar base. Don't you own that land?

BB: The way I understand it, it's whatever entity has landed a human or robotic craft owns and takes responsibility for the immediate land area around its lander. In particular when Humans are present there is added responsibilities and security.
In other words; you land on it, you own it.

SH: In my personal opinion, that's the way it'll be. Ownership is 99.0% being there on the Moon. There was a discussion at the NASA Exploration Strategic Workshop based on what is the governance, what are the laws, what's the model. Some people thought the Antarctic model would apply, but there were some glitches there that don't seem to apply. Others said, lets get commercial industry going and we could address this question of presence implies ownership. Would this be valid in an international court of law? I think this is all premature until humans begin to return to the Moon.

BB: I read recently about Pete Warden, director of the NASA-AMES center. He was discussing the idea of nuclear power on the Moon being a bit of a risky situation, but better doing nukes on the Moon than anywhere else.

SH: He was talking about research on risky things on the Moon so if you wanted to design these high temperature cores or something that's pushing the technology then you do it up there on the Moon. Probably the first thing will be biological systems. If they breach their containment they couldn't get anywhere. So that's the kind of work that can be done on the Moon.

REAL WORLD ROCKET (SEARCH) ENGINE AND KILLING HUMAN CANCER

  Designing a spaceship powered by the capture and use of evanescent particles is what Dr. Howe strives to realize and for the task of transporting a fully operational interstellar spacecraft to Alpha Centauri is no small undertaking. Searching neighboring stellar systems for their possible planetary and moon systems requires ingenious physics to arrive at such distant locations within a reasonable length of time and the added benefit of cancer treatments here on Earth.

I asked a few questions on antimatter technology.

BB: Have you abandon antimatter technology or is it in your portfolio ?

SH: That is certainly not in the purview of CSNR. But I'm still co-founder of HBAR technologies

BB: I've got a question on AIMSTAR : Antimatter Initiated Microfusion For Pre-cursor Interstellar Missions.
What happened to the co-authored paper and to the tests on hybrid nuclear fusion antimatter and the antiplasma gun?

SH: That went by the waste side. I was at the time heading "Synergistic Technologies" with Jerry Smith and we were looking at antiprotons to initiate fusion we hit a 'roadblock' it's difficult to do the annihilation products, they don't couple well to small scale samples.

BB: The reason I ask is because NASA on its main website featured Positronic (anti-electron) antimatter type propulsion system.

SH: I know and I have objections to that. Because they claim at the end of that article piece it was better than nuclear propulsion systems that might rain down radioactivity on the planet. This was a very irresponsible and a totally inaccurate statement.

BB: Did you complain about this space propulsion system slander?

SH: Well...to whom? It was on a NASA site. We could complain, but it was a NAIC funded thing. At this point we just wrote it off. It was an inaccurate 'sales job' most people recognize it as well. It was a sales job. On the other hand, are you familiar with the paper we published more recently with the antimatter sail?

BB: Yea, that's the stored antimatter collision coming into contact with sail matter-right?

SH: With Uranium. A Uranium coated sail. This is not a solar sail were its size is in kilometers in diameter. This concept is about five meters in diameter at a couple hundred microns of layered Uranium on the inner surface of spacecraft sail. It uses low energy protons for propulsion the paper I co-authored with Gerald Jackson. We had a phase two NIAC of this concept so what we calculated we could take for a 100kg total mass of the package when it left Earth you could have a 10kg payload arrive at star Alpha Centauri in 40 years. That's for 17 grams of stored antimatter fuel. We're using the fission products as the actual propulsion method.

BB:Going 30,000km/sec.?

SH: Yea.

BB: In 40 years to arrive to approximate location of Alpha Centauri. How do you make this antimatter fuel?

SH: 17 grams of antimatter is quite a bit of fuel. That's the first miracle. Second miracle is do you store it in a compact method?

BB: Can you use HiPat and Penning Traps?

SH: No, what we envision is the ability to store microscopic, nanoscopic particles of solid anti-hydrogen.

BB: The mirrored Hydrogen.

SH: Yea, its just like if you took hydrogen and dropped into Helium. You would make little bitty frozen flakes. We worked through the physics on how you could make those particles and hold them in microscopic electrostatic traps. There was some miracles to overcome-if you can do it.

BB: Is this with some kind of nano technology?

SH: Yes, it would require that. The whole basis though, is when an antiproton hits a uranium nucleus it will fission. If you can do that at low energy then that fissioning will occur at the very surface of the sail. So one fission product goes 'out' and one goes 'in' essentially you have 1.7 million second Isp. All your doing is letting the fission products drive the sail which in turn drags along the spacecraft. I like this concept better that induced fusion. We went the other way to get way from all the mass we can because when you get up to 30,000kg/second every kilogram is worth Gigajoules/kg. So we're still doing the antimatter stuff.

Our eventual goal is to develop cancer therapy using antiprotons.

BB: Is this related to proton therapy and Loma Linda University oncology facility ?

SH: Exactly, so if you do therapy with antiprotons it's even better than with protons. The antiprotons will stop based on their incident energy. So you can pin point exactly were they go and when they stop they annihilation on a local atom and deposit enough energy to kill the cancer cell. That's with much lower dose to the body with single treatments we think you can use antiprotons in small doses to kill cancer.

BB: This must be a good opportunity for subatomic accelerators and collider facilities to service healthcare.

SH: Potentially our first clinic would be at Fermi Lab. It takes about a 10¹⁰ antiprotons to kill a cm³ of tumor that's well within current production rates.

BB: That's putting these labs to work in a big way.

SH: Yes, we hope to have them work privately.

BB: What are commercial aspects to Accelerators, Colliders and Cyclotrons etc.?

SH: Fermi Lab produces right now 2x10¹⁴/year antiprotons and with 1% of the beam treat 500 patients/year. Fermi Lab is the most intense antiproton source in the world. So there are applications with sufficiently low numbers to perform high value treatments and a good economic venture, but propulsion would not be economical.

BB: It would take a massive (antiproton) antimatter factory to produce grams of antimatter.

SH: There you can think about the Lunar surface when you want production of those kinds of quantities.

BB: Some people are still beholden to some futuristic propulsion schemes. In a sense antimatter is closing the gap on usable energy it might bypass fusion-is that correct?

SH: Potentially, we certainly know how it works; storage is the problem where fusion you can store it but you can't break even with it yet...energy wise. With antimatter you'll never break even, you'll never get more energy out than you put into it. But you can find applications that are sufficiently valuable as in space usage were mass is at a premium that's were antimatter is valuable.

BB: What do you think of NASA today with CEV, ITAR, COTS and private enterprise in the field of space collaboration? Personally, I don't see much cooperation between the two camps, they seem to be far apart some companies still hold influence with older systems Shuttle and ISS. Obviously things seem to progress very slowly for both government and private aerospace companies. What's your view on current space activity?

SH: It's difficult once you have momentum in a mature agency it's hard to make it move. It's hard to make it efficient again. But you have a great amount of resources you can use.. My opinion is that what I would like to see is NASA essentially build the equivalent of the "Transcontinental Railroad" to the Moon and then industry can follow up and generate industrial things all along the way.

BB: Would that entail a nuclear-centric space program for both propulsion and power?

SH: The current plan and architecture does not have that philosophy or view in mind. Personally what I'd like to see, if you were around in the days of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the late 80's. They created a program office whose sole purpose was to get this project done. And it reported to the secretary of defense. It didn't have to use DOD labs, it didn't have to use anybody. It used the most efficient source it could for whatever technology it needed. I think if NASA were to adopt that instead of saying, I have to use all my NASA centers. And it created a "Program Office" that said, my job to get this return to Lunar activity built with industry onboard. I think we would be seeing a different architecture. Personally I don't think that will happen.

BB: So are you saying, use a modular approach?

SH: Like an SDI "Program Office" which says, here's the money your job is to get us on the Moon and pick a date and along the way here are certain requirements like, you must have industrial participation or you're going to buy industrial participation. I really would rather have a Lockheed/Martin base where NASA was the anchor tenant that guaranteed a rental rate [NASA as guarantor/underwriter]. I would rather see other people actually own the base. I think the Moon is within private enterprise reach and NASA should be using it on the way to go to Mars and should simply be creating the infrastructure so that commercial entities can get to the Moon and use it start making some titanium beams to bring back to LEO to make hotels and things like that.

BB: You consider yourself as a privateer?

SH: For the Moon... yes; not for Mars. Mars I think is a governmental effort.

BB: So that private companies like Space Adventures Ltd. and others can begin to really do things on the Moon making it more like a destination.

SH: I think in truth that's the only way we'll maintain and continue any kind of program support from otherwise relying solely on governmental support. There are too many changes in administrations and congress that it would not be able to maintain itself. We'll see if it ever develops that way.

BB: I'm president of Nuclear Space Technology Institute (NSTI) I I've been trying to get grants for students to get them to financially afford attending educational institutions in the field of study like CSNR. I try here in Canada and in the U.S. I've been told by professors Dr. Anghaie and Dr. El Genk who teach the field of space nuclear science have problems getting students to stay with the program because of expenses, not all of them have grants to cover the cost of education. This field of study is expensive.

SH: It's really the continuity issue. There is no doubt. In fact they've told me they can document this that enrollment goes up when they have a space nuclear program vs a nuclear program. However the fluctuations in NASA support in recent years have been so large that many students found themselves cut off in the middle of their degree. So now the universities are very weary. So what we're trying to build here is exactly that; some kind of program that's defined for continuity so once you get on it you don't find yourself chopped off at the middle.

BB: I didn't know it was such a grave situation.

SH: There were a lot of students that got chopped off [grants ceased] with the JIMO thing.

BB: I get requests for information on where an applicant might apply to schools offering a space nuclear program.

SH: Universities Space Research Association (USRA) my boss. Which includes member institutions like University of New Mexico, University of Florida, Michigan State University, University of Illinois. There is an organization supporting INL with about eight universities the three Idaho schools, MIT, Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon State, Univ.of New Mexico these institutions are getting involved. We are clearly working with MIT to supply them with research topics for undergraduates, but we're not supplying them funding yet, they have the facilities and the money to fund undergraduate research and we're trying to give them topics that will then integrate with research we want to get done at the graduate level so when those kids get to graduate they have background skills in the field. Embry-Riddle has an undergraduate level program space power and propulsion .

BB: University of Toronto has aerospace studies .

SH: We had 112 students in one month apply for our 14 slots this summer at CSNR . These are some of the schools represented this summer: UCLA, Univ. of Utah, Georgia Tech, Embry-Riddle (Daytona Fla., Prescott Az.), Univ. of Florida, Texas A&M, Boise State Univ., New Mexico State Univ., Univ.of Leicester (Great Britain), Colorado School of Mines. And we are also hoping in the future as part of the 'No Child Left Behind' Program provide physics information, instruction for grade school teachers.

...There is no greater expression to the human spirit than having the ability to live and thrive on other worlds.

 

Graphic credit: NASA/HOWE