Elon Musk FINALLY Admits Nuclear Is The Only Answer!
musk enjoys defending technologies that we do not even know are technically feasible such as electrical propulsion for aircraft neuron microchip interfaces to expand The Power Of Consciousness and nuclear fusion which would be simple to implement if the reactor were made larger and recently he finally admits that a nuclear thermal rocket is the only answer to reach Titan in a span of less than two years compared to chemical propulsions that will take for nearly seven years but how will SpaceX make this happen let's find out in this episode hello everyone welcome back to Elon Musk Evolution where we bring you the most recent news about Elon Musk and his multi-billion dollar companies space news and the latest science and technology but before we begin make sure you subscribe to our Channel and click the Bell icon so you don't miss any of our amazing videos is America prepared for another rocket disaster the follow-up flight of Starship which will use an enhanced version of booster 9 and a startling collaboration with ship 25 is scheduled to take place in a few months while the memory of the first launch is still fresh the subsequent test will primarily focus on the first stage flight with the booster despite the latter lacking improvements already utilized on sibling ships at the production facility with the upgrades to the launch pad expected to be finished in a month and an additional month of test before the next test flight Elon Musk noted that ship 25 is already at the launch site and waiting for a six engine static fire test after more than a month of pad flow that included multiple rollbacks for additional adjustments booster 7 and ship 24 finally took to the air even with the few months of pad modifications needed after booster 7 dug a hole and ignited a rock tornado during its launch the following campaign will be finished in a timely manner with the rapidly and entirely reusable tag bearing the objective of launching every day from the same pad in future years the decrease of the pad flow will be an overall concept for Starship SpaceX has installed a water-cooled steel plate and Deluge system under the orbital launch mount in the interim in an effort to prevent the flying concrete of the first launch prior to the steel plates being carried in around a month according to musk preparation for its installation has been proceeding at the launch site in recent weeks a month of pad testing would follow after the repairs to the pad are finished musk said in a Twitter update that highlighted spacex's highlights video of the test flight that time frame was given a few possible cryoproofing and static fire tests the integration of the ship 25's entire stack tests with the changes at the pad and the integration of the booster 9 on the olm are all included in that testing the six engine static fire test for ship 25 will be performed at the sub-orbital launch site once it has completed cryoproofing at the masses test facility following musk's earlier statement that a decision has not yet been made during his last Twitter space it has now been announced that the latter will fly with booster 9. we haven't made a final Choice regarding the ship intimating that the next flight would be focused on re-entry with the ship after the main goals of booster 9's first stage Mission musk remarked a few weeks ago that's why I was referring to booster 9 but I was somewhat I did not say the ship number as a result I believe we should add a ship that offers us that capability however we haven't decided on the precise ship number yet the emphasis on ship performance during re-entry seems to hint toward using ship 28 or ship 29. these two which had the most recent thermal protection system installations and like booster 9 and later electric thrust vector control systems the decision to use ship 25 suggests that the test flight's first stage will be used to further several objectives which is obviously the case a significant improvement over the first test flight would be a first stage Ascent that avoided significant pad damage and continued through staging with the ship as the testing regime progresses towards the ultimate aim of operational missions SpaceX May then switch to the newer ships for subsequent flights booster pieces up to B15 and ship portions up to s34 have been observed at the manufacturing facility proving that SpaceX has enough of vehicles ready to go recently booster 10 was relocated to the Rocket Garden perhaps only to clear out room in the giant Bay in order to accommodate this production speed SpaceX is rearranging the production site demolishing outdated structures and getting ready to expand High Bay capacity the recently delivered LR 11000 crane is expected to assist in building a new Bay next to the megaport following the arrival from Roberts Road the latter is spacex's production facility at the Kennedy Space Center which has yet to start assembling but is intended to have its own gigantic Bay prior to delivering vehicles to KSC SpaceX will probably concentrate on production at Starbase as musk previously announced will be the initial flow path the wind break which was dismantled on Sunday to make room for new facilities to be developed in the region was an old structure that was used to work on nose cones and payload sections at the Starbase production site layout improvements will continue until next year in the years to come it is planned to destroy the lengthy manufacturing tents so that the star Factory can grow in size likewise planned is the removal of the mid Bay as the high base capacity grows over time the private space industry will be ruled by SpaceX in fact it's so Advanced that their starship rocket might one day Aid in erecting a martian base or even a whole Martian City on the other hand in a remote part of England engineers at Pulsar are slavishly developing a spacecraft that will far surpass Starship in capability the human race will be able to explore the enigmatic depths of our solar system and perhaps even other star systems because of a reduction in the amount of time it takes to get to Mars how is it possible for them to carry out such a significant technological advancement when will this rocket be completed Does Elon need to worry then Pulsar is a strange company its goal is to provide commercial fusion power for Europe however they are approaching it the wrong way interestingly Pulsar does not develop its own reactors like helion does rather they are creating their own reusable rockets and plasma thrusters for satellites contrary to popular belief the satellite Thruster is powered by the same technology as magnetic confinement Fusion reactors as a result by developing and launching Satellites with this technology they may refine it and eventually turn it into a working fusion power plant which is what they intend to achieve a middle ground between plasma thrusters and a full-fledged Fusion reactor was discovered by someone at Pulsar though and it has the potential to revolutionize space travel as a result they created the direct Fusion drive and they intend to test and ship a functioning prototype of the engine in 2027. we don't even know what kind of fusion reactor would power the DFD because this project is still in its early stages and its intellectual property is very closely guarded however we can speculate the heaviest sword of fusion reactors are tokamax which are enormous reactors with a donut-like shape the Tokamak type of fusion reactor would not be effective as spacecraft propulsion because of its enormous bulk which would slow acceleration and increased fuel consumption however Pulsar hopes to construct their own Tokamak in the future although significantly lighter than the plasma thrusters being developed by Pulsar Interstellar reactors like the national ignition facility employ entirely different Technologies thus neither of these reactor types is probably being used by pulsar but magnetized Target Fusion reactors use technology that is comparable to that of pulsar's plasma thrusters and our compact powerful and light in reality they are two extremely potent plasma rockets that are oriented in the opposite directions the technology used in helion's reactor is remarkably similar to this one to eject the plasma out of the craft at a speed of more than a thousand miles per second instead of using the Fusion Energy to create power so what's the big deal why is pulsar's DFD such a possibly groundbreaking piece of technology it is because it is the only space propulsion system that provides High thrust and high impulse and let's get into detail a little further the term ion thrusters may be familiar to you they resemble the plasma thrusters of the Pulsar in a lot of ways both of these engines produce their propelling Force by the utilization of electromagnetic force which propels tiny amounts of propellant at astronomically high speeds small amounts of thrust a few grams are produced by these thrusters they may however operate for years on only a few kilos of fuel due to how little of it they need with a high impulse this is referred to chemical Rockets the ones we are all familiar with are the exact opposite they have a strong push and a weak impulse because of this they suck up fuel quickly and can only burn for a few minutes even if they have enough Force to escape the atmosphere and enter Orbit on the other hand Fusion engines have the capacity to produce extremely high thrust while consuming very little fuel giving them a very high impulse why therefore is this important what this means is that we can carry more and travel farther and faster in space in just a few minutes a chemical rocket can accelerate rapidly and burn through hundreds of tons of fuel this doesn't pose a problem if all you want to do is orbit the earth however it restricts interplanetary speeds in principle an ion or plasma engine might accelerate a spacecraft to incredible speeds however doing so would take decades and render it unusable for anything other than course correction however without the need for enormous fuel tanks Fusion drives can accelerate quickly for days on end this enables a DFD powered spaceship to carry large payloads while having the time it takes to Journey to Mars do you think SpaceX should be concerned if Pulsar succeeds in creating a powerful Fusion propulsion system dfds probably won't take the place of chemical launch Vehicles like Starship although they have a high thrust they presumably cannot achieve a similar amount of push without spending much more money DFD vessels on the other hand are more likely to stay in orbit and serve as space infrastructure the market for launch Vehicles which are used to place payloads in Earth and Martian orbit will probably continue to be dominated by SpaceX however if a DFD craft can transport several hundred tons from Earth to Mars and vice versa in half the time of a Starship it makes sense for Pulsar to develop a fleet of Martian Express DFD spaceships these would never set foot on the ground instead they would Ferry payloads between the planets with a launcher and Lander akin to those found on a Starship carrying the payloads to the ground from the DFD ship therefore while SpaceX will make it possible for a martian Metropolis to exist DFD ships may end up handling the majority of the logistics for transporting supplies and people to and from the red planet since the substantially faster travel times could mean the difference between life and death for such a precarious Colony this is especially crucial if we plan to dwell permanently on Mars a powerful engine though might also make it possible to conduct groundbreaking research with the help of missions like New Horizons Voyager 1 and 2 Cassini and Voyager 1 and 2. we
have previously investigated the furthest regions of the solar system these missions however took a very long time to Journey billions of kilometers to the far away planets moons and asteroids they also add extremely strict payload restrictions making it impossible to add more sensors Landers and probes to the mission theoretically a DFD craft with numerous additional land or missions may go to these far-off planets in a few years this means that humans could finally travel to Enceladus and explore its potentially habitable cold Waters or search for the enigmatic planet 9. NASA has even suggested a number of various sorts of speculative Fusion vehicles that if successful might transport humans to the Proxima Centauri star system our nearest star system in less than 10 years the mission at hand is not a flyby the Earth-like world of Proxima B could be reached by these Fusion craft if they make it to the other end so maybe pulsar's DFD will be used in the future to transport us to our Cosmic neighbor therefore Pulsar has the potential to rule space exploration and interplanetary travel however whether the DFD will work as suggested is still up in the air even if the test in 2027 passes without a hitch it might still be some time before one is powerful enough to outgun a Starship launch probes to far-off moons or even reach Proxima Elon Musk may now rest peacefully for the time being on the other hand the NASA dragonfly mission is one of the most eagerly awaited Expeditions into the Solar System's outer regions the mission which will examine Saturn's moon Titan is scheduled to launch in June 2027. Titan is one of the only moons in the solar system with any observable atmosphere a liquid cycle that resembles that of Earth but with methane and is simply our favorite Moon dragonfly will launch a mobile Lander with eight rotors capable of hopping across the moon's surface making it more technologically advanced than the Mars helicopter ingenuity according to NASA dragonfly will be able to go about 10 miles in each half-hour flight which is a significant increase in range above a wheeled Rover's capability it will examine a region that is hundreds of miles or kilometers across throughout the course of its two-year mission dragonfly must first glide through the atmosphere of Titan and soft land on Frozen Ground since the atmosphere of the moon is filled with a thick layer of hydrocarbon smog before it can take to the skies on its own the Shangri-La Dune field next to a 50-mile wide crater selk will be the location of dragonfly's Landing a team of scientists led by planetary scientist Leia bonifoy of Cornell University has re-examined the images taken of this area by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its mission to Saturn between 2004 and 2017. the
results provide the most precise assessment of dragonfly's proposed Landing site to date dragonfly according to bonafoy is going to a scientifically remarkable area dragonfly will touch down in an equatorial dry area of Titan where it occasionally showers liquid methane but is otherwise more like to an earth desert with Dunes a few tiny mountains and an impact crater selk is an intriguing place the impact that carved it out which is thought to be geologically young a few hundred million years or less would have melted the local ice causing reactions between the fresh liquid water and organic molecules existing in the hydrocarbon soup on Titan's surface astrobiologists are particularly interested in the primordial chemistry that would have developed as a result which would have involved carbon-rich compounds but was not mediated by living things however the resolution of cassini's radar pictures of the region is only a thousand feet per pixel at best we undoubtedly missed a lot of little rivers and scenery according to bonafoy since the Huygens Lander from the European Space Agency parachuted to Titan's surface in January 2005 while riding along with Cassini scientists are confident that such Rivers indeed exist on Titan but these Rivers do not contain any liquid water because they are far too cold at -290 degrees Fahrenheit they are not even close to being able to support life rather vaporize methane and ethane fall from the icy Sky wash away from the water ice bedrock and enter River tributaries that feed enormous Lakes however cassini's pictures did offer a variety of Vantage points it made 127 close passes to Titan during its Mission and during each one it observed features in the vicinity of dragonfly's Landing location from various angles varying in inclination from 5 to 72 degrees sounds perfect right however dragonfly won't reach Titan until 2034 which is a seven year waiting period however researchers from Princeton satellite systems and other universities and aeronautical institutions believe that a direct Fusion Drive may be able to travel between Earth and Titan with greater speed and effectiveness a case made in a recent paper which was published in the journal ACTA astronautica is that a fusion power drive which can provide propulsion while also powering onboard Electronics may be able to transport more fuel and cargo to Outer moons like Titan the paper also created a scenario that illustrates what a Titan Mission powered by a DFD would look like a DFD could carry 2220 pounds to tighten in 31 months according to a 2021 study from an international research team the dragonfly Mission now weighs in at around 990 pounds according to this new study the Expedition will be powered by the Princeton field reversed configuration idea created at the Princeton plasma Physics laboratory although the fusion used in this drive is not exactly the same as the fusion that will power the fusion reactors on Earth for example it uses a novel radio frequency heating method at its core it exploits the same physics that power our sun one more benefit one of the elements that is most prevalent in the universe hydrogen is used as fuel in this device this Fusion Drive was first described in the following manner by researchers two years ago the propellant in this DFD first undergoes ionization before entering an area with a strong externally applied magnetic field there the propellant circulates around the engine's core where a nuclear fusion reaction takes place and heats the propellant with its byproducts thrust is then produced as the hot propellant expands into a magnetic nozzle the use of a second Fusion reactor to create a closed-loop electrical power generator would greatly extend dragonfly's current three-year Mission parameters according to this new paper and would also enable a spacecraft to reach Titan in less than two years nuclear power already shows signs of being essential for the future of human space exploration even if Fusion may still have some work to do before it can be installed on a NASA spacecraft for instance the NASA Innovative advanced concepts program has already begun phase one development of a nuclear thermal propulsion system a fission system that could transport Freight to Mars in just 45 days instead of 8 months as it turns out both domestically and internationally nuclear power may very well be the way of the future and that ends today's video what do you think of ship 25 and booster 9. will they reach lower Earth orbit or Leo and how about pulsar's Fusion rocket engine let us know your thoughts in the comment box below please subscribe to our channel to receive updates about more videos and don't forget to click on the thumbs up to like today's video please share this video with your family and your friends we'll see you in the next video thank you so much for watching for watching for watch
2023-06-09 18:05
