Why space needs nuclear now

Time Markers

00:00 – Episode introduction
00:26 – Project Orion
02:27 – Project Nerva
03:49 – What happened to early investments?
06:33 – Cultural problems
08:15 – Safely launching nuclear powered spacecraft
10:26 – Why nuclear in space
13:35 – Lunar technologies
16:08 – Outer space treaty and regulations
20:07 – Commercial nuclear launches a go
20:59 – On early inspiration
24:16 – Space Takes – Defense Budget
32:15 – Space Takes – Jared Isaacman
37:49 – Space Takes – China’s international effort on the moon

Transcript – Bhavya Lal Conversation

David Ariosto – Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t start with a bit of history here. So you know, you and I have talked this about this quite a bit, but this project go Ryan, and for those who don’t know, who are watching and listening, this is a study back in the 1950s by the Air Force DARPA and NASA about a nuclear pulse powered spaceship. And I wanted to read something to you and to the audience here from the 1955 Defense Department report authored by Stanislav Ulam, who worked, as many of you know, on the Manhattan Project. And it talked about, quote, repeated hydrogen bomb explosions outside the body of a projectile. This projectile, being a spacecraft of some sort, are considered as provide providing a means to accelerate object. Essentially, we’re talking about this almost quote, unquote, pusher plate that was sort of a fixed behind an aircraft that would absorb the shock of these detonations and then propel the craft forward, presumably at fractions of light speed. So the reason why I mentioned this is not only how crazy that sounds for starters, but these ideas of nuclear power propulsion, they date back at least 75 years old, so maybe we can just start there.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah, so, I mean, you’re exactly right about Project Orion. It kicked off in 1958 so you know, at about this, and I think that’s a really interesting point, that the Nuclear Age started at about this, or the nuclear space age started by the same time as the space age. So, you know, sometimes when we say, say, is nuclear new? Absolutely not. We’ve had nuclear since the start. And again, I mean, the point you made, I mean, imagine Saturn five like rockets carrying hundreds of nuclear bombs as pulse units to propel it was an audacious vision. David, I think, I think the the tagline was Mars by 65, Saturn by 70 right? So, you know, we are, we are behind. Let’s get with it.

David Ariosto – Just talking about the technology of that, I don’t know how one the ship doesn’t vaporize in the process. I don’t know what kind of material is being used, especially material science in 1955 that would absorb a shock plate. But also just, I mean, there were, there were other projects that sort of associated with this project, Nerva, which is this nuclear engine for rocket vehicle application, was just devised to explore nuclear powered missions to Mars as well, like this, potentially this upper stage use for even the Apollo program. So, like this wasn’t just theoretical stuff back then. There was, there was, there seemed to be some, some real momentum behind that at the highest levels of the agencies.

Bhavya Lal – I mean, again, you are on the mark, In fact, you know, we all remember that rice, piece of rice, page of of John F. Kennedy’s, you know, after he talked about, you know, first, I believe that this nation should commit itself to the death after that, the second point he made was, you know, secondly of, you know, $23 million will accelerate the development of the Rover nuclear rocket. Rover was a predecessor to to Nerva and and he kind of goes on to say this gives promise of someday providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps at the very end of the solar system itself. So, so, you know, Kennedy said that in that 1961 speech, and we all we forgot.

David Ariosto – So what happened? I mean, I think the natural question is, just like you see all this dream of vision projects, everything that’s associated with, like the galvanizing sense of what Apollo was in this race to the moon, and then there’s you see, like a little bit of a drop off in the subsequent decades. I mean, what? Why?

Bhavya Lal – Yeah, so that is, I mean, I think that is the heart of the problem. And again, just to repeat your point, David, we’ve spent nearly $20 billion on nuclear power since the 50s, and the only system we currently have is a light bulb sized 100 watt radio isotope generator. And that technology is virtually unchanged since its inception. So, so it’s actually, it is, it is extraordinary, yeah. And I think what essentially happens is, you know, typically, an optimistic goal is announced, overly aggressive requirements. You want to do something big, right? You know, we want to go straight from we have no car to we want to build a Porsche. You know, tech and infrastructure development begins, and then schedule slips begin, and mission compromises begin, and then, and then, basically, the mission is abandoned, and tech development stops. And then infrastructure stagnation begins, and there’s no workforce left anymore. And after a few years, again, new enthusiasm, you know, cycle begins all over again.

So, there’s lots of reasons for it, David, but I think, ultimately, I think nuclear power in space, up until, I think recently, has been viewed as a nice to have rather than a must have, right? And I think it is lack of demand that inhibits investment. And then, of course, once you don’t have investment, there’s no technology development, and then we enter this chicken and egg problem. So I think the problem we have to solve right now is this chicken and egg problem, and actually, others have solved it. So, you know, talking about this compelling mission, and again, you also referenced it. You know, Russians having launched more than 30 reactors while we’ve launched, you know, one Experimental Reactor. Well, why did Russians need one? Well, they needed to track us, aircraft carriers and submarines at sea, which means they needed active radar. But as you know, radar, its power a lot of it, and they didn’t have, you know, good, you know, good radar technology, so even probably more power then to get good signal, they needed to fly lower earth, which means a lot of drag on their solar panels. So if they needed to track us assets, they needed nuclear, and they developed a launch nuclear so, so that’s what you know, that’s what it means to have, not a cool bonus, which is kind of how we think about nuclear power, but absolutely necessary,

David Ariosto – Right? It, I mean, the Russians may, in some ways, see this more existentially than the Americans, in many ways. I before we get to sort of the geopolitic geopolitical question, because I think that’s a big one here, in terms of what drives this. And you know, you saw in the 1960s the sort of the adversary was the Soviet Union. New rivals are more in line with China. But when we talk about nuclear, specifically, you talk about almost a culture problem that has been sort of part and parcel of the agency over the last couple decades. But I think there’s also maybe an optics problem in terms of the nature of the word nuclear and how that sort of plays out, not only with sort of existing structures and questions of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that prohibits these type of weapons in space, but also just sort of bleeds into this broader public subconscious that, like thinks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, You know, and Fukushima, frankly, in terms of the devastating power of what might go wrong, especially if you’re launching reactors aboard missiles or rockets, that is that don’t always reach orbit. So that’s, you know, unpack that a little bit for us.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah. So, I mean, I think it is unfortunate the birth of the nuclear age was in weapons and not power, so we constantly conflate the two. And you know, there’s a lot I mean, and at the heart, you are correct that it’s a cultural issue. It’s an issue of education in helping people understand that controlled chain reaction are not the same as uncontrolled chain reactions. And to some extent, we actually do know that 20% of the United States nuclear power generation is nuclear. In France, two thirds of their power generation is nuclear. So I think we have accepted it terrestrially for space.

And again, I’ll just specifically speak to your point about launching a reactor in a rocket. And you know what happens if the reactor explodes. So first, we have been launching radio isotope sources since 1961 so the very first radio isotope launch was by the by the Navy, right? So, and over the years, we’ve launched worldwide, you know, more than 75 missions that have nuclear sources in them. So we have safely launched nuclear systems. And while, you know, there have been some, you know, some accidents, in fact, the there was a Soviet reactor that disintegrated over Canada. And since then, we have put some more safeguards, international safeguards in place as well. The thing about fission reactors is that when they are going to be launched, and I hope that will happen soon, well, for the second time, we have already launched one in 1965 and it worked fine until it was switched off. They are it’s fresh core, as in, there is no real. You activity in it. So exploding, you know, sort of uranium is like exploding any other, any other you know, material, in fact, you know the James Webb Space Telescope had, you know, many kilograms of beryllium in it, beryllium, the element and that is far more dangerous for for humans than you know non, you know non used uranium or right now we use hydrazine in our, in our, in our, in our rockets. Hydrazine is toxic for humans.

So in some ways, nuclear can actually be safer than what we are already launching our nuclear fission and on top of that, and and so we don’t turn these reactors on until, until we are at minimum altitude. And there’s a lot of discussion about what ought to be, that minimum altitude should be 900 kilogram kilometers. Should be 2000 kilometers or even higher. And those are things that you know, we as a community, you know, with with safety experts will decide and make sure that they’re not harmful for humans.

David Ariosto – What I think that’s really helpful in terms of the broader context of this. I think maybe to we should probably, maybe just take a step back in terms of why, why nuclear? Why do we need this? I mean, we’re talking about, we’re talking about human habitats, energy grids, we’re talking about propulsion needs, but what, what? What what is, what is, sort of the go between. If you can, you can sort of explain, you know, the value add on this.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah. So I think at the very heart nuclear in space is essentially the same as nuclear on Earth, one kilogram of uranium, 235, really can release as much as, as much energy as 1.5 million kilograms of coal. So it’s just the energy density is so high, you can have a Mars mission with uranium the size of a, of a, of a marble. So given how important, you know, low masses, yes, so, so I think, I think I make the point. And then, of course, once you have that, you know, there’s, you know, there are some cases for nuclear. I mean, beyond Mars, we really don’t have a whole lot of solar power. I mean, sure we have kind of, you know, stretched our technology to get new solar power till Saturn or so, the Dawn mission.

But beyond that, I mean, there is, there is no way to have to do a whole lot of science without nuclear. So, I mean, a really good example, a few years ago, we went to Pluto with a new horizon mission. The probes whisked past Pluto. Why? Because we didn’t have the delta V to go into orbit. So there is this, you know, multi 100 million, multi-billion dollar mission, and all we have is basically 24 hours worth of data, which took a year to get back. Because, you know, we basically had that. Remember that remember that I mentioned that light bulb. We had a light bulb amount of power, and we had to split the power between sending data back and doing more science or processing data, right? So I think, I think we just get so much more value for our money if we have nuclear. I mean, a few years ago, we had this Huygens mission that landed on, I think Titan, you know, we got a few hours worth of data. And these are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of missions. We want more taxpayer value for our science mission, and that’s on the science end. And of course, you mentioned human habitats. You know, I think human you know, we on Earth use about one kilowatt of power per household. So, you know, if we are going to have, you know, 10s, hundreds or 1000s of people on other planetary bodies, we need, we need high density power if we do anything industrial scale, you know, we have the others company that want to mine helium three.

There’s companies that want to do other industrial processes on the moon. And then if we go to Mars, we are going to need to generate propellant on Mars for journeys back, especially if we use chemical systems again, we need megawatts of power to be able to do that sort of thing. And that is not coming from solar or batteries or fuel cells.

David Ariosto – You know, helium three is a whole other sort of can of worms, I think, in this conversation, not only is it potential use in terms of some of these super coolants for our growing sort of energy needs, but its potential for use is almost an ideal energy source in nuclear fusion technologies. But I think if we back up a little bit and focus at least on lunar activities, a lot of the sort of different designs that I’ve seen, and there are a few when it comes to this international lunar research station that are sort of moving forward in terms of America’s adversaries oftentimes put these fission reactors as core parts of several of their designs. And so it seems like this is a technology, and this is sort of an approach that has sort of been widely adopted by America’s adversaries, and I’m not entirely sure where we stand now with regard to Artemis base camp on the moon. Obviously, you know, when we talk about energy, power needs, solar is a big part of it. I would imagine fission reactors are also a big part of it. But what are you seeing in terms of like, is this still the priority? Do you where we’re where do we stand now, in terms of the these, these energies that that seem, what somewhat divided now.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I just wrote on on this topic in a space review with Jeff Foust. Absolutely. Mars is the horizon goal. You know, we have talked about, I mean, the day after we came back on Apollo 11, Von Braun wrote, you know, our Mars plans, so, so and again, Mars is also in, at least in my mind, it’s, you know, it’s not the end. It’s, you know, there’s something after that. But in order for us to prepare for Mars, we need to be doing things on the moon, including, you know, testing and operating nuclear reactors. I mean, you know, Mars is what, 400 you know, 40 to 400 million kilometers away. Moon is only 400,000 kilometers away.

So it’s our testing ground which is our proving ground. And in my mind, it’s also we need something going to Mars is a multi year effort, multi decade. You mentioned geopolitics, right? I mean, we, if we want to be global leaders, we need to be showing our leadership in quick turnarounds, you know, next year, the year after that, the year after that, you know, having lots of amazing robotic missions on the moon. You know, there’s a lot of science to do on the moon. So, yes, Marc is the horizon goal. We will be on Mars. We need to prepare to be to prepare on the moon, to be on Mars. And of course, I don’t know where NASA is at with respect to the planning. I know the Artemis, you know Artemis programming. I think in 2026 we, you know Artemis two goes off, and I’m so excited about that. What happens after that? We’ll see.

David Ariosto – Right it, I wonder, I wonder, in sort of the broader context of sort of the norms and standards that this, this applies to, because, you know, the sort of the governing, the governing piece of a legal framework, is that 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which, you know, this is something that, although somewhat universally adopted. This is something that was signed, like, two years before the first astronauts even touched down on the moon. So, like, it is an old document. It still has a sort of a lot of relevance, but it’s been reinterpreted over the years. And so, you know, as we look at that in terms of what it says about nuclear weapons in space, and questions about what Russia may or may not have already on orbit, and some of the countermeasures that we looked toward, but also energy sort of is the foundational aspect of infrastructure.

And without that, I do kind of wonder, you know, this almost might makes right type of approach and being there, like the value of being there and being able to operate independently with energy needs that might come from fission reactors is, is almost this, like seminal part of this next era in space, geopolitically, especially. And I just wonder about that in terms of the trajectory that we’ve taken, how serious that America is valuing this and like where this stands over the course of the next five to 10 years. As as you know, commercialization sort of begets more infrastructure and more geopolitical interest, and it almost starts to start to feed on itself in a way.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah, I mean, and that absolutely needs to happen. We need to start, you know, the crawl, walk, run approach. We start with a small system, maybe in Earth orbit, then we go beyond. And ultimately we are, we should be looking at hundreds of kilowatts and megawatts of power in space, because that is the kind of energy we are going to need to do anything substantial, you know, you mentioned the Outer Space Treaty. It’s, yes, it is old, but it is, you know, it’s a constitution of International Space Law, and it, you know, the, you know, the treaty really does make a difference between, you know, nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It kind of draws a clear line between peaceful nuclear power and weaponization of nuclear technology.

So I don’t think, if you read the even as a layman, I’m not a lawyer, reading the Outer Space Treaty, it causes me any concern that you know, nuclear power is banned in space or has frowned upon. And since the treaty, there have been other activities. One, there is a working group today on the use of nuclear power sources in outer space. The United States is part of that working group. There was a 1992 document called Principles on nuclear power sources in outer space, which laid out best practices for safety, risk and management and planetary protection. I can think of it as our first attempt to develop a operations manual, and that’s I mean, Article Six says that the governments of nations are obligated to provide authorization and continuing supervision of space activities. So there’s a lot of safeties and systems baked into the treaty that. Um, nothing. There nothing in international law prevents us from doing the right thing, which is, you know, in my mind, expanding ourselves out into the solar system, bringing the solar system into our economic realm.

Those are all important things to do. And I think we are on our way. I mean, government has been, I mean, NASA, you know, started a lot of, you know, commercial oriented activities, with the cough program, and that has expanded the Artemis program is, you know, is partially commercial as well. And the clips program, the recently, amazingly successful Firefly launch, has been, has been amazing. So I think, I think, I think we are making progress. You know, a lot of us face nerds wanted to be faster. And I hope with, you know, with even domestic regulations like the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) that came out, I think in 2019, or 2020, is is critical for us to move forward. And one huge accomplishment of NSPM 20 was that, for the first time, it opened the door for commercial nuclear launches. So nuclear no longer needs to be a government owned and operated activity. You know, private companies can provide NASA with power on the moon, right? NASA doesn’t have to build and operate these reactors, you know, just like we buy power, you know, from the socket, here we buy power, power from the socket on the moon. Why not ?

David Ariosto – That does seem to be a hallmark this sort of, this, this new, new era, you know, sort of new space, or new space 2.0 however, you’d sort of find it all right. So I want to sort of wrap up this conversation to talk about you, essentially. And I want to take you back to July 1969 you’re about two years old. You’re in a forest in India, riding atop your father’s shoulders, shoulders, and he was an electrical engineer. And you came to this clearing, this was what you told me, or this which you wrote, and he put you down, and he started narrating the moon landing. And, you know, fast forward, and you know, you and your father watching Star Trek together until you ended up at MIT studying engineering. So, like, I can’t imagine any of this is a coincidence in terms of what you do now, and maybe sort of that germination that I’ve heard so many times from different sort of luminaries in the field, within NASA and elsewhere. They’re just sort of those seminal moments early on in childhood, in formative years, as you know, as as young adults, that kind of propel, propel us. And so I wonder if you could point to that, but also point to it in the context of maybe what, what’s I want to say, what’s missing. But there’s like questions now in terms of engagement within STEM in terms of young people and how much and how much they’re galvanized in the same way they might have been in on the heels in the wake of that 1969 moon landing.

Bhavya Lal – Yeah, even space really does have this unique power to inspire. I’m kind of uncomfortable talking about myself, but I’ll, you know, I’ll tell the story of my daughter. When she was eight or nine years old, I took her to the LADEE launch out in Wallops by DC, and for the first time, I think, in her life, or I remember, she kissed me out of her own free will, like, you know, I didn’t make her like, hug mommy. So, so it’s just so inspiring when you just see a rocket launch, the light, the sound, the the vibrations. It’s just, it’s just, and again, you know, you go back and you say, Well, I want to study math. I want to do that. And even if you don’t necessarily study space, or end up becoming, becoming a space professional, like, like we are, I think you’re just, you know, you better in humanity. And, you know, I kind of came into, you know, I had all these, you know, amazing space experiences.

But then, I mean, I studied newfound engineering at as an undergrad and grad student, and I was kind of drifting a bit in the in the after my PhD, when I read this science fiction novel called Earth the bites, which was basically kind of an anti history where often, you know, apocalyptic event humankind kind of goes from today’s abstract civilization to Stone Age primitism and and that kind of scared me, and I felt like I need to do something to preserve humanity. And I started asking questions, I started reading books, and eventually I found that many of the people who were asking the questions I was asking were in the space sector, and there were also thinking about, how do we preserve humanity? And that kind of pulled me back into the space world, you know, obviously curiosity, and then policy, and now career. And now, look, I get to talk to you. So it all worked out.

David Ariosto – See, I say it was me getting to talk to you. Thank you, Bhavya. Thank you for joining us. This is a conversation that we’ve been trying to have for quite some time now. And it was a real pleasure to have you on the show.

Bhavya Lal – It was a blast Dave. It’s so great talking to you.