rickair7777

With the technology in use at the time? The radar signature would have been a blob.

But both of those were visual engagements anyway.

TransWorld

UFO. Only 26 episodes were shot in Great Britain. One season.

Fillmore Slim

Well if we built the SR-71 in the 1950s using sliderules and limited computer technology and we believe that the last smart guy was Einstein then we deserve to be in the dark.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/02/new-google-solve-for-x-lockheed.html

rickair7777

The CFR sounded pretty exciting when it was announced about a decade ago. But the goal was very aggressive, and the more you know about physics and the underlying technology, the more aggressive it appeared... to the point of implausible in the eyes of many folks with the relevant background to assess something like that. Not surpringly it didn't get anywhere near the goals in the original timeline.

Also fusion is hard, and a small fusion unit just makes it harder. Also not surprisingly the prototypes have gotten bigger.

Worth pointing out that fusion power as we approach is not some vastly powerful magic... it's just another means to boil water. The advantage is essentially no waste, zero emissions, and the fuel is small quantities of water.

Hypothetically you could maybe someday build a fusion reactor powerful enough to bleed off plasma from the core to use for space propulsion... but that's further down the road, right now we're just trying to make the core get hot enough to self-sustain and have a little steam left over for power generation. It doesn't have to be efficient at all... in fact they will probably be grossly inefficient as far as net energy output vs. energy generated in the core. But that's OK, the fuel is as close to free as it gets, so you can just build a bigger wasteful machine to get the net output you need... the practical limit on that is the cost of the hardware. Or possibly on a very, very large scale, the waste heat would be an environmental problem. If you replaced all the worlds power generation with fusion at 10% efficiency (cost of water for fuel still negligible), you'd be dumping waste heat into the biosphere at a rate of almost ten times the world's power consumption. That would likely be a problem, although current power generation is not 100% efficient and has it's own waste heat (but fuel cost dictates efficiency a whole lot closer to 100% than to 10%).

The "compact" part of it is looking less and less likely, at least in the near/mid term.

Fillmore Slim

I appreciate the perspective. Admittedly, I'm not a scientist by trade. I do believe that there have been significant leaps in technology that are out of the public eye. For instance, the F-117 was developed in the early 70s. When the public first saw it they were going into retirement. The first nuclear sub was commissioned in 1954. That means we've been studying / innovating nuclear power for 70+ years. As a gen X'r I've gone from growing up with a rotary phone to having the world at my fingertips. Whether it's a CFR or another power source, I believe we already have solutions to some if not all of the worlds' problems.

And if you can shrink a CFR down far enough, what's to say it couldn't be used as a power source for some sort of air (dare I say interplanetary) type vehicle?

rickair7777

Indeed. Much of the negativity surrounding nuke power is associated with old technology (think 57' chevy) and associated issues. There are some VERY good, and very much inherently safe nuclear power designs which should be deployed to today... if the eco freaks are actually serious about climate change.


The originally announced concept for the CFR included a heavy emphasis on vehicle power, specifically aircraft. It's certainly safe enough, but the technical and scale issues I mentioned are pushing any potential practical utility for aircraft to the right. But again, it's carbon zero and the fuel is free so maybe just eat the extra weight... one time up-front cost for a larger airframe.

Broccoli Rob

I don't know, I think it's possible that Voyager 1&2 could end up crashing into another planet one day long after we've lost contact with them. We were smart enough to launch them, but not necessarily capable of doing much with them once they left our solar system. What are the odds that if the government really did find a crashed vessel that it wasn't some sort of similar probe from another planet that ended up here by chance? Maybe sent out thousands of years ago before our radio waves would have made us discoverable by a distant planet.

My ultimate hang up with the possibility of UFOs being extra terrestrial is, why keep it a secret? Sure, there could be some national security reason I guess, but ultimately if astrophysicists and scientists like Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson had legitimate proof that there was life in the universe beside ours, wouldn't they want everyone to know about it? Wouldn't that lend credence to some of their theories and peak the imagination of the public rather than sending everyone into a panic? Keeping it secret just makes it look like it really is Russia or China screwing with us, and the government doesn't want to admit that they haven't figured out how to outsmart them.

rickair7777

Unmanned probes are a theoretical possibility... but they would not "accidentally" arrive at earth... the vastness of space is incomprehensible to most people, you have to think in exponential terms to understand it. It's possible that somebody might aim a probe at a planet in a distant star system... probability somewhat increased in our case given that our planet's spectral signature may be a common indication of habitability and life (we know for sure that life works here).

1. I think it exceptionally, ludicrously unlikely that our (or any) government has acquired or captured ET hardware (astronomically less likely they got ET himself). Hardware is barely within the hypothetical because WE could send probes to other stars if it was a big enough priority (like REALLY big $$$$$$$$$$$), and we had a lot of patience to get info back (many decades or centuries most likely).

2. But if they did acquire something, I can think of reasons they might keep it under wraps:
- Keep the enemies from getting it.
- Might be dangerous, need to research it carefully although a basic space probe should be pretty obviously harmless.
- Avoid public panic/turmoil.
- Greed: Maybe the people in charge want to capitalize on it somehow. But that's OBE if you're talking about Roswell... all the of the people who were in a position to control and capitalize on something like that at the time are dead (or almost dead).

Reality, they're not keeping anything secret unless it has to do with OUR military/intel capabilities... if we share intricate details about these encounters it could disclose our own technical capabilities, knowledge which our terrestrial opposition could capitalize on. That last part is not really in question, unlike hypothetical ET.

If DoD has reason to suspect that there's something outside of our technical capabilities going on (terrestrial origin or otherwise), you can be assured they have the right people looking at it. The DARPA community includes many top science people, and for something like this anyone else they ask would agree to help.

JamesNoBrakes

Nuclear fission is very expensive and involved. You have to try your best to design a no-fail situation and even then, it's impossible to design out every possible situation, like Fukishima, which is a good example of how bad things can go. If you ever get the chance, watch a program on what happened to the cores and how they've tried to contain the radiation. Going back to where I started, what it ends up being is extremely costly, it takes a lot of regulation, from the design, to the quality of materials, to training, and so on. The infrastructure required is massive. Then there's waste, and waste isn't just spent fuel rods, it's every part that is contaminated by radiation, which also accelerates corrosion, so you end up having to stick lots of stuff in some place to just sit there, not just spent fuel rods. During the 50s, yes, we pushed some boundaries and a lot of the "details" were not really sorted out or were left out completely. It's kind of funny, because many of those projects and experimental reactors were not meant to last more than a couple years, but we obviously want a reactor dedicated to nuclear power to last decades and decades, without any issues. The early pushes and experiments led to many accidents, many more than are widely known. Contrary to popular belief, most accidents don't result in a Chernobyl accident, but criticality and chain reaction accidents still do real bad things. You generally only get the "nuclear bomb" situation with an actual kilo-ton/mega-ton release, because the reaction has to be very carefully directed and controlled within a nuclear bomb to use a significant portion of the fissionable material. When you get one of the more common nuclear reactor or criticality incidents, it's more that a tiny bit of fissionable material is used up and that blows everything else apart so no more fissionable material is able to be used for reaction and criticality is no longer possible. Besides the explosion risk though, these incomplete reactions tend to release massive amounts of radiation, much more than a nuclear bomb for instance. These didn't/don't just happen in reactors, but nuclear fuel processing sites and other places that support the industry. All of this doesn't mean nuclear fission is bad, but it's also not some sure-shot solution for all areas and situations. It takes lots of money to ensure that all of those processes are safe and it's a money-hungry industry. That doesn't often mesh well with governments that have to make cuts or private companies looking to skimp in favor of the bottom line. Many cities favor gas-turbine generators, because they are so easily scalable. The amount of infrastructure and time to get another one up and running is nothing like having to build a new nuclear reactor. This is also why many other energy sources have become favored, they require far less infrastructure and can provide energy much cheaper and easier than nuclear fusion. Nuclear isn't "cheap", it takes more resources and ultimately energy in some cases. I don't think it should ever be off the plate completely, but it didn't turn out to be the giant windfall that it was made out to be originally...mostly because they chose to ignore or not answer all of those important details initially.

Nuclear fusion is a lot harder. I didn't know this until recently, but there are actually multiple types of fusion that happen on the Sun. We are trying to do the "easier one", but that's only relative to the harder one. The incredible pressures and temperatures necessary are not easily created and then sustaining them is another huge hurdle. It's basically the complete opposite of fission, where we just put some things close to each other and they do all the work due to chain reaction and criticality principles. With fusion, you have to force and sustain the conditions of the sun, where gravity has caused matter to become crazy dense. Only then can you get fusion and as said above, you are hoping to get more out of it than you put into it. I believe we will undoubtedly get there, but to first create the conditions where this can be sustained and create excess energy is still a huge hurdle. Think a little about the energy source that is required to create those "sun conditions". It's conceptually valid that you need a nuclear fission-sized energy source to initiate your nuclear-fusion reaction.

Yes, harnessing that in a compact reactor would be what makes all sorts of sci-fi tech possible. We are probably a long long ways off from that. Maybe not as far off from sustainable-reaction nuclear fusion, but even that's still a ways off. Compared to 50 years ago, many of the things we experience now were science fiction. How computers have become integrated into everything and being able to instantly connect with anyone in the world, robotic applications, electric cars in the mainstream with comparable range to ICE, many examples. Our imagination is a double edge sword here, it gives us new ideas and directions, but it can also create unrealistic expectations.

rickair7777

Fundamentally that was a management failure, for the typical reasons: cost. And of course they were told by the engineers not to put the emergency gens at sea level.

But again, old technology. Modern designs would be passive fail safe in all situations, unless the San Andreas fault opened up underneath it but we shouldn't site reactors on fault lines anyway

It's not very costly if you're *really* concerned about carbon.

Spent fuel is the only significant waste problem. It gets reprocessed to capture the usable fuel isotopes but that still leaves you with some very hot, very long half-life isotopes that have to be buried somewhere like Yucca Flats. Reality, fission is a stopgap until practical fusion is available (which is essentially waste free).

The non-fuel waste material is just components and materials which were exposed to neutron and gamma flux. It's not very hot, and decays down to safe levels fairly quickly.

But even high level fuel waste decays to safe levels in several thousand years... which is better than much of the toxic waste from other industries which persists forever (ex. elemental mercury).

No western production reactor has a core physics design which would enable a prompt super-critical reaction. The "bomb" effect simply can't happen due to physics. Russians OTH... the Chernobyl core (and other plants with the same design) had core physics which made a prompt super-critical event possible. Their physics was literally the equivalent of the throttle failing wide open if the cable to the pedal breaks. When it came to selecting reactivity co-efficients... they chose poorly. Then they were like "hold my vodka and watch this..."

The worst that can happen to free-world plants is a meltdown (Fukushima Daiichi, TMI) and that only happens if emergency cooling fails. Again, that's only possible in old designs... lessons learned.

Only example is Chernobyl, which is not applicable to our plants.

It happened a few times in the early days when they were still learning. But not recently.

Personally I think they should be owned by .gov. You might outsource staffing but ops and mx management should be .gov. Works for France, and works for the US Navy. Also standardization... both France and the Navy did that too. See a trend? Custom plants makes every nuclear "line pilot" a test pilot.

If carbon is real problem why does it matter if it costs more than natural gas plants?


All true. But global warming. If you're not building nuke plants, don't be telling me to curtail my lifestyle.

We can do it now just fine. The problem is it takes a lot of energy to maintain the containment... the best fusion cores in operation now can not quite break even. So the issue is really one of enabling efficiency gains with advancing technology.

That's how hydrogen (aka fusion) bombs work... a fission bomb serves as the "trigger" to compress the tritium enough to fuse.

For power cores they mostly use big, powerful magnetic fields. Lasers have been used too.

The challenge with fusion is efficiency, and the tech needed to enable that. I think we're approaching a threshold there, and as I've said before a practical fusion plant doesn't necessarily need to be very efficient (by the standards of other power tech).

Big alibi though, they need to be able to use the fusion core to breed tritium fuel from readily-available deterium. Otherwise you'd need fission plants, or an energy-intensive accelerator to do that... $$$$$$ Theoretically a fusion core can happily breed tritium just fine but that adds complexity.

Of interest...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...ty/ar-BB1fjPr8