Somebody famous once said that SPACE is a place to be big in, so nuclear powered space craft will not have a problem. Although some parts of a space ship will need to be strong and dense the biggest parts only need to keep in 1BAR of pressure, ~14psi or similar. I think we could do that with a layer of steel a couple of millimetres thick [ OK airlocks and ribs and such but lets leave the details to the ship builders] and we mine the iron in the asteroid belt etc. We also mine the water out there somewhere and then we recycle everything and everybody.
First we need the foothold
First we need the foothold
The ship would then require an intermediary stage of desalination and a means of storing it, so now you have two systems to deal with. If memory serves, toilets aboard ships are flushed with untreated sea water, that would make three distinct systems of water.
It's neither easier nor harder... as I noted ( or maybe just hinted ) it's a matter of power. You need power to make potable water.
Conventional ships would rather use the oil for propulsion and powering up the radars and stuff like that. Not to make life easier for the crew.
In a nuke ship power is there to waste.... lots and lots of power available. So they make as much water as they want.
How do you propose to use a nuke to create propulsion?
Current nuke plants create electricity.... and then what? The only propulsion system that would work with would be an ion drive but that is impractical for large and medium ships.
So, if it's chemical then you got the weight of the fuel..
Personally, I think it will be a gravity drive that allows for Faster Then Light speeds.
Warp 2000! From here to the edge of the galaxy in a week.
Either mass drive or ion drive can use nuclear power. Maybe even tiny and focused nuclear explosions.
We could use powdered moon rocks as the expelled mass or water if we could find sufficient quantities of water, water driven into an ionised state by heat perhaps and plenty of water out in the Oort cloud when we get there and heaps of methane elsewhere
Just ask NASA what they have in their think files and none of those ideas are mine, greater minds than mine have already done all that thinking
We could use powdered moon rocks as the expelled mass or water if we could find sufficient quantities of water, water driven into an ionised state by heat perhaps and plenty of water out in the Oort cloud when we get there and heaps of methane elsewhere
Just ask NASA what they have in their think files and none of those ideas are mine, greater minds than mine have already done all that thinking
Nuclear Thermal Rockets.
Nuclear thermal propulsion systems would transfer the heat generated by a nuclear reactor to a liquid propellant such as hydrogen, which would then transition to the gas phase, expand and be funneled through a nozzle, creating thrust.
You still need a chemical propellant.
My idea of warping spacetime in front of the spacecraft to travel through a 4th dimensional coordinate system (space - time - gravity) makes more sense to me.
Nothing but electro magnetic warping of space by changing the fabric of space time via the manipulation of strong forces. Think of of it as energy transfer from mass less electrons to pluons, gravitons with pluots as a byproduct.
Heck, you could go through space making space weak jam from a never ending source.
The trick will be to envelop the crew within the space in a gravity Faraday cage so they don't turn into pluot marmalade.
My idea of warping spacetime in front of the spacecraft to travel through a 4th dimensional coordinate system (space - time - gravity) makes more sense to me.
Nothing but electro magnetic warping of space by changing the fabric of space time via the manipulation of strong forces. Think of of it as energy transfer from mass less electrons to pluons, gravitons with pluots as a byproduct.
Heck, you could go through space making space weak jam from a never ending source.
The trick will be to envelop the crew within the space in a gravity Faraday cage so they don't turn into pluot marmalade.
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Nuclear thermal propulsion systems would feature higher thrust and twice the propellant efficiency of traditional chemical rockets and would minimise travel time to and from Mars.
The hypothetical Alcubierre drive folds spacetime up in front of a starship and expands it behind, effectively bringing the destination closer and pushing the origin point farther away.
This would involve surrounding the starship with a bubble that kept spacetime flat inside (keeping the mass and time inside the ship normal), but squashed outside.
The starship wouldn't technically be travelling faster than the speed of light, but the result would be the same.
Unfortunately, to operate such a drive would involve hypothetical negative mass (that accelerates towards you when pushed!) and the input of an insane amount of energy!
(1) Without, the relativistic way of looking at it, from the outside it would be FTL. But within it would be slower than light.
(2) When you push, it shoves... Besides, 200 years ago, the notion that a nuclear power plant can put out 2.2GwH would have been considered an insane amount of energy.
"Warp drive" moves space around a stationary ship to avoid all these boring acceleration problems spoiling the story.
Currently reading (wondering what some will say here - I knew people who said his book 19 years ago was a crock):
https://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is-Nearer/dp/B08ZJRMWVS/