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Rolls-Royce’s grandiose plan to mine the moon and Mars

Rolls-Royce’s nuclear plan to mine on the Moon: New space race for vital resources – and a launch pad to Mars, By ALEX LAWSON, FINANCIAL MAIL 20 September 2021  Rolls-Royce is developing a nuclear reactor that it hopes will be capable of powering mining operations on the Moon and even Mars, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. 

Dave Gordon, head of the company’s defence division, said it is studying how a micro-nuclear reactor could be used to propel rockets while in space at huge speeds. He revealed that Rolls-Royce is investigating whether that technology could then be redeployed to provide energy for drilling, processing and storage for socalled ‘Moon mining’. ……………..

No nation can claim sovereignty of the Moon under the Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967, but the US and Soviet Union brought back lunar soil samples in the 1960s and 1970s. Nuclear systems have been used on the Moon before. In 1969, the crew of Apollo 12 used a generator to provide the electricity to operate scientific instruments. ….

Gordon admitted that to bring the project to fruition would take ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’, but that early stage work could be achieved for far less……. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10004081/Rolls-Royces-nuclear-plan-Moon.html

September 21, 2021 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear Modernization Casts Budget Shadow Over Air Force Plans


Nuclear Modernization Casts Budget Shadow Over Air Force Plans

“There’s no free money, right, so it has to come from somewhere,” said Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements. Breaking Defense, By   THERESA HITCHENS September 20, 2021

 AFA: The fundamental budget challenge facing the Air Force is the “nuclear bow wave” of spending required to modernize its nuclear force structure, with a “major danger” that those costs will make all the service’s other modernization plans untenable, said Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, who leads future force development.


“There’s no free money, right, so it has to come from somewhere,” he told reporters during the annual Air Force Association conference here. “But if it comes from the top line of the Department of the Air Force, and frankly the Department of Navy, it’s going to crowd out other things, other investments, and it’s going to be very difficult to have a modern Air Force and a modern Space Force, a modern Navy, and recapitalize the nuclear triad. That’s where we are right now.”

The Congressional Budget Office in May 2021 estimated the price tag for the total DoD triad modernization effort at $405 billion from 2021 through 2030, up from the $238 billion it estimated in 2019. This ginormous price tag does not include spending by the Energy Department to build the nuclear warheads that would be carried by DoD’s ICBMs, bombers and subs……. https://breakingdefense.com/2021/09/nuclear-modernization-casts-budget-shadow-over-air-force-plans/

September 21, 2021 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Aukus fallout: for years, US told India it couldn’t share nuclear submarine technology. ‘And now this

Aukus fallout: for years, US told India it couldn’t share nuclear submarine technology. ‘And now this …’

Deal between Australia, the US and Britain to share nuclear-powered submarine technology has some in India asking why it hasn’t been granted similar access to US technology…….. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3149446/aukus-fallout-years-us-told-india-it-couldnt-share-nuclear?module=perpetual_scroll&pgtype=article&campaign=3149446 Pranay Sharma 20 Sep 21.

September 21, 2021 Posted by | India, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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