Aallegra.367 net.space utzoo!decvax!harpo!zeppo!wheps!ihnss!mhtsa!allegra!phr Tue Apr 27 20:16:36 1982 Nuclear Power in Space The US has in fact orbited one nuclear reactor, SNAP 10A, in the early 60's. There's been a fair amount of talk about using rotating bed reactors to power orbiting lasers, and work on nuclear rockets continues on a small scale, although this is all on the ground. NERVA was cancelled for lack of funds, not through any commitment to not use nuclear power in space. There hasn't been any because things just happened that way (although public outcry might make any other course difficult). [SNAP stands for Secondary Nuclear Auxiliary Power; the "Secondary" refers to RTG type generators. In fact, all the SNAP systems launched except for 10A have been of the RTG type]. See the superb book "Enterprise", by Jerry Grey, for more details. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.