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[Dorsidwarf]

That asshole statement of benefits of space along with the no nukes in space because "you'll pollute space" (fucking hippies, God how I hate them with white hot passion) are to be revised and corrected the moment we get more space presence.

I thought the Nuke ban was because of the time the US nearly ignited the Pacific hemisphere's sky.

[TempAcc]

I thought the whole thing about ~igniting the atmosphere~ was said to be impossible (though nobody knew if it was before the tests) :v?

[Gigaz]

Isn't the treaty between governments rather than applying to the whole of humanity?

Register HQ in country that did not sign Space Asshole Prevention act



Profit.

And then? You try to sell your space stuff and the local government seizes it because according to their law, you don't own it.

[i2amroy]

Actually the recent law the US signed goes a fair way towards clarifying things in the United States at least, with pretty much the whole point being that if a company claims resources in space then they still get to keep possession of those resources.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/2015/11/president-obama-signs-bill-recognizing-asteroid-resource-property-rights-into-law/

[Culise]

I thought the whole thing about ~igniting the atmosphere~ was said to be impossible (though nobody knew if it was before the tests) :v?

Pretty much.  They had already run through the math before the Trinity test.  It was mostly just Fermi (surprisingly, not Feynman) playing a prank by offering to serve as a bookie to the military on site regarding the odds of that happening; I think the person in charge chewed him out since the military guards didn't have clearance for all the math or the background to understand it, so they took it at face value.

[Amperzand]

The scary one over the pacific didn't pose any risk of igniting the atmosphere, but it did destroy many satellites by creating a radiation belt in orbit, and EMP Hawaii. It was also bright enough to look like a second sun randomly appeared in the middle of the night, having been detonated some 500 miles away and 65 miles up.

[Starver]

What is there to ignite? There's oxygen, but nothing for the oxygen to burn with that isn't an endothermic reaction.

I think (because the above discussion seems to be mixing up something happening actually over/in the Pacific with either/both of the Japanese bombs with the original Trinity Site test, so at least three different 'firsts' with at least three different designs of bomb) that it's "ignite" as in "cause a runaway nuclear reaction to cascade through the atoms in Earth's own atmosphere", rather than combust.  (And why doesn't my spill-chucker recognise "combust"?  I may be sleepy, but I'm sure that's actually a word.)

It was certainly a question that was put to the scientists, pre-Trinity. They knew how hard it was going to be to initiate the Trinity bomb itself (and weren't even so sure about the different-design Hiroshima one, after that) and the tenuous air of (overwhelmingly) stable isotopes shouldn't have been susceptible to running away, but someone or other is reported to have quickly made some calculations to that end anyway, when the question was asked by either a genuine or mischievous questioner.  (Reports did vary as to who actually asked and who actually answered, so it's hard to tied down the motives.  But I tend to think it was a form of geek humour.)

[Rose]

They didn't know that at the time.

[Starver]

That wouldn't happen either at all ever. Nuclear fission of atoms lower than iron on the periodic table, excepting unstable isotopes, needs more energy than they let out.

They didn't know that at the time.

I think the point to take away is supposed to be that they did 'know' it wouldn't happen, but they didn't know that it wouldn't happen.  So it wouldn't hurt to double-check, once actually considered.

I imagine that up close (FCVO 'close') to an exploding nuclear and/or atomic bomb the Nitrogen in the air (as an example) is getting bathed in the various nuclear products and radiations and do get fissioned.  Especially the slight amount (half a percent, IIRC) of normally stable but potentially 'top heavy' ¹⁵N.  It'd absorb an amount of the energy, along the way, but still assist in propagating the remainder outwards (just behind the uninterrupted primary 'explosion' that hasn't yet been retarded) with further subatomic spall from the interaction, more than would happen with a 'perfect moderator' atmosphere.

Without much in the way of observations of such a high-energy event, therefore, could they be sure that the energy produced wasn't just enough to collide with a hemisphere or so of atmosphere before finally petering out.

It probably took just a few moments of thinking to cross-compare the absorption cross-sections and comparative nuclear stability
of the primary atmospheric gasses (and some of the secondary ones, just in case there was a surprising).  Just to make sure that it couldn't roil out further than acceptable.  (Perhaps emulating the problems with the Psychlos of Battlefield Earth (the novel, if not film...) and their atmosphere's reaction with radioactivity.)

Similar to the proposed dangers of the LHC, I suspect that any 'surprise' elements we might have had doping the atmosphere with the potential to create a runaway effect (enough to account for their rarity in the atmosphere) would have previously been struck by cosmic rays already, and thus long ago either activated or denatured in the process, back when it caused us no harm at all...  But the cosmic ray mitigation surely wasn't well enough known (if at all) to the more down-to-earth scientists.

Remember: When detonating a prototype nuclear device - Safety first!

[PTTG??]

That asshole statement of benefits of space along with the no nukes in space because "you'll pollute space" (fucking hippies, God how I hate them with white hot passion) are to be revised and corrected the moment we get more space presence.

The reason we are very careful about using nuclear power in spacecraft is because every single spacecraft we have ever built needed to go through the atmosphere to get to space. Getting through the atmosphere is the most dangerous part of spaceflight by a long shot, in part it involves putting a lot of explosives directly underneath the thing we're trying to put into space.

Over the history of spaceflight, there has been a 94% success rate over all launches. To put that in perspective, if driving cars had a 94% survival rate per trip, and everyone drove twice per day, then after a week most of the United States would be dead.

Every single time a spaceship explodes on launch, every part of it gets spread everywhere.

Now, we've gotten a lot better than 94%, but it's still always a risk. There are places where we use nuclear power in space, and it is a specific, calculated risk. In some ways, putting a radiothermal generator on a spacecraft is a safer method- if the alternative is a spaceship that is 10 times heavier, we can afford the risk because it offsets the risk and expense of a larger mission.

I am an advocate of using nuclear power in space and on earth. But people urging caution and creating regulation are not hippies, they are for the most part concerned professionals.

[10ebbor10]

You're all very confused. The nuke ban applies solely to nuclear weaponry, for the clear and simple purpose that it was created during the Cold War, and was one of the many mutual de-escalation descisions made during that time.

There are no restrictions on nuclear power in spacecraft (that don't also exist for earth bound nuclear power).

[LordBaal]

Yeah, but orion space craft would be akin to propulsing yourself with a office chair and a ak47. Surely you can't go around and pass a ak47 as a simple propusion engine.

And I have personally heard the "we are going to pollute space if we nuke it too" stupid argument in person. That day I almost had a stroke.

[Amperzand]

I have heard the act of nuking space likened to urinating in the ocean. It does, technically, make things worse, but to such a negligible degree that nobody really cares.

Unless you detonate the nuke inside the geomagnetic field, which is actually dangerous, and tends to cause EMP events and artificial radiation belts, both pretty problematic.

[Gentlefish]

I remember that the "ignite the oceans" was fear of the heat being strong enough to separate the chemical bond of water and then ignite the hydrogen.

[TheDarkStar]

Best Korea can into space?