Last edited Tue Aug 5, 2025, 06:46 AM - Edit history (1)

In this episode, the lunar nuclear waste explodes, hurtling the moon across the universe.

The people on the moon base survive and then have adventures, usually involving such things as falling through black holes and meeting powerful aliens with big egos and various personality disorders.

Last edited Mon Aug 4, 2025, 05:16 PM - Edit history (1)

It's so cheesey it raises my cholesterol.

?si=x8wRNc5dnqp5fSya

Edited to add some cheese.

Maya was actually a cool character.

Thank you, and I did recall it was "nuclear waste" blowing off one side of the Moon into inter-stellar space as the premise.

please put Archie in the nearest mental institution - oh wait....I forgot Ronny Raygun did away with them

What possible use would energy on the moon be?

What are they going to power?

Is it the first step towards some kind of colony or mining operation? Perhaps and advertising billboard big enough to see from earth?

I don't get it?

> What possible use would energy on the moon be?

Powering things like colonies and stellar vehicle construction and low-gravity research, for instance.

> What are they going to power?

Stuff that will be quite useful should humans ever want to colonize off-planet.

> Is it the first step towards some kind of colony or mining operation?

One could hope so.

> Perhaps and advertising billboard big enough to see from earth?

Perhaps. F47 would certainly approve of a huge image of himself orbiting the planet.

Seriously, the moon is our jumping-off point for further extra-terrestrial exploration and expansion. Much of the space colony tech will be developed and tested and refined in lunar colonies.

... we'd see the mango Mussolini in the moon

The way Musk was talking, I got the impression they wanted to skip the pre-requisites, which is a fatally bad idea.

No, they are not colonizing the Moon nor Mars.

and it will somehow get us--r at least the richest of us--off the planet in time for environmental ruin.

Let's see what they're really up to here.

Only fitting that F47 would be the inaugural member, so to speak.

TSF has a tiny mushroom. That is all.

What protects the facility from meteroids uninpeded by atmosphere?

The availability of water will be an issue, with some ice-mining involved. Fortunately, lunar water contains a lot of hydrogen isotopes (deuterium, tritium) useful for fusion reactions.

> What protects the facility from meteroids uninpeded by atmosphere?

This will be a tough problem that will need to be at least partially solved to enable any long-term exo-colony development. Sub-surface colonies with minimal top-side facilities are the likeliest initial mitigative approach, although eventually humans might use something like the "iron dome" technology to intercept and destroy or redirect incoming meteors.

We shouldn't enter into such a venture lightly, pretending there are no hazards, nothing to learn, and no problems to solve. Unfortunately, F47's team of wastrel idiots likely will do just that.

I was born a month before Sputnik, and grew up with the space program. Always saw it as worthwhile, aspirational, the future of mankind.

Read a lot of classic sci-fi in my early 20's. This thread brought to mind "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein, in which the Moon is a penal colony and the inmates revolt with the aid of a supercomputer that becomes sentient.

Fiction, but I think our society needs the realm of ideas and aspiration for the future now more than ever.

It would be possible to transmit power wirelessly from the moon to the earth. Whether it would be practical or desirable is another matter. And then, of course, there is the matter of the epstein files.

Presumably, we can get oxygen, among other things, from the moon dust.

The Man Who Sold the Moon...

"Moka-Coka company, for example, that rival soft drink maker plans to turn the Moon into a massive billboard"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon

Robert Heinlein... 1950 novella.

The story of the last of the robber barons who attempts to "own" the moon.

The guy from MTV's Real World has the expertise to figure all this out. Another scam to siphon money from the taxpayers to Stinky and his minions.

What could possibly go wrong.

which NASA currently needs to land astronauts on the Moon. You know, the one that keeps blowing up. Fuck, now that the Trump-Musk bromance is over, you can actually criticise the South African racist safely.

Duffy's safety fixes consist of having his wife fly out of other airports when he considered Newark to be less safe.

Duffy left Newark open for the lesser folks.

I'm not suggesting its a good idea, particularly at the present time. But the fact is that NASA started work on what was called the Kilopower project in 2015. It eventually evolved into the Fission Surface Power Project, for which contracts were awarded in 2022.

How do you fuel a nuclear reactor on the moon?

(Left as an exercise for the reader)

WTF? Think of how many children that this boondoggle could feed.

I read it 3 times before I believed it. What next? Piranhas in the Rio Grande? Giraffs on ice skates?

Seriously, what are we going to do up there that requires a nuclear reactor?

Pit stop on the way to Mars. At least, that's Elon's idea, so I've read.

We can't afford to give everyone health care, but somehow we can afford $200 million ballrooms (which should make it obvious they have no intention of leaving, by the way)...to pour billions into ICE and make them larger than the CIA and FBI combined...to build a $450 million+ concentration camp in fucking Florida...to throw HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS (if not trillions) into motherfucking AI, an industry they refuse to regulate...the absurd "Golden Dome"...and now a fucking nuclear reactor on the moon?!

Never, ever give Republicans the time of day when they ask how the fuck the country can pay for anything anymore. Clearly there's nothing they won't pay for as long as they're the ones in control. It's not a matter of fucking money. It's about values and priorities. Something this country no longer has.

And the kicker is the grifter gets to keep it...after wasting 900 million of taxpayer dollars.

But no $6.00/day SNAP benefits for all you slackers.

If we’re going to talk about outrageous NASA projects; this is most likely a far more attainable goal.

No space suited astronaut, et. al. is going to build anything!

Smaller preassembled local units would be feasible.

Duffy is thinking regional where there is no region to power.

(I've long thought that neighborhood power plants are better than large regional ones)

This goes back at least as far as Nov 2021.
Don’t give credit to the current government for these expansive plans!

https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/tdm/fission-surface-power/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20in%20partnership%20with,on%20the%20Moon%20and%20Mars.

But money for building a ballroom at the WH and make nukes for the moon.

But Mr. Dahlia said - it could "explode" before it left the atmosphere...especially if it's in a SpaceX rocket.

We either blow up Earth or the Moon.

Are they stupid? His answer: Yes.

Trump always says he'll do things in "two weeks," but nothing ever happens.

musk space ship keeps blowing up and AI at this point can not building a space ship without humans both mentally and physically.

Maybe in 30 - 50 years, but shithole and comrades is doing their best to destroy the earth.

. . . go pick out the site.

I would hate to see an Elmo rocket blow up and scatter it

How much nuclear fuel would you need, and how would you get it there?

My probably ill-informed answers: 1. lots and 2. with rockets blasting off from earth.

And I assume the payloads would have to be shielded. even if un-crewed, to protect the workers pulling this together for launch. To do any good shielding from gamma radiation has to be heavy. Then too, if the rocket goes boom on the pad, or explodes in mid air, or fails to reach orbit, or otherwise screws up.....

This is just another terrible idea in the annals of terrible ideas, especially since NASA is losing qualified people left and right. Imagine one of these missions being pulled together by some MAGA flunky, the engineering analog to RFK Jr.

Let's hope this dangerous fantasy quite literally never gets off the ground.

Perhaps there really is a silver lining in this insanity.

Helium-3 rich surface in the solar system?

because you have to heat it to break the atomic bonds. Once you have extracted Helium you could then create a pure Helium based cycle.

Thanks, red leg.

An already woefully underfunded NASA, that has had its budget cut by an additional 40% and has the greatest brain drain in its history as this administration declares war on education, science and scientists, is going to launch fissile material into space on a rocket that, if we have a single accident, could leave over half of Florida uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years? Have I got that right?

They were expecting many more employees to take the voluntary resignation but only got about 900 to do so. The latest news at KSC is that 6,000 people will be laid off because of the budget cuts. This is just at KSC. Can you imagine the ripple affect of that many in Florida being let go? My son is a software engineer at NASA and he will just leave the state if he's one of the layoffs. He hates Florida anyway. He's told me morale is extremely bad right now and they want to launch Artemis in January.

.... which, of course is what a nuclear reactor does. But I don't understand, and I can't find it explained anywhere, how the heat gets turned into electricity. I don't think they will be operating a steam turbine on the moon.

I can think of two possibilities...

* Thermoelectric, based on the thermocouple principle. This is a tried and true space technology, but is inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator

* More speculative, a Sterling engine to produce mechanical power, and then drive a generator. I'm not sure this would work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

Anyone have any clues?

I hope he visits the thread. If, he hasn't already. I've only read as far down as your post at this point.

The water that flow through the reactor and turbines is a closed loop. You'd have to transport the water there too, of course (extracting it from rocks there would need energy - and if you had that, you wouldn't need the reactor). The cooling would have to be done without evaporation, or transfer of heat to river/sea water that we do with Earth-based reactors, but I think that would be possible by radiation - certainly during a lunar night, and maybe during a day too (with shading? A proper engineer of scientist might be able to say if it's feasible).

There are craters on the moon with areas that are perpetually in shade, and even may harbor water ice. So if you place it properly you may be able to have a cold zone day or night.

No clouds, one side always facing the sun... what am I missing?

Probably easier to maintain as well.

On the moon. Does it still get pelted with stuff?

That's a lot of batteries.

The moon has dark periods when solar would not be effective. It would be used, but it would not be continuous. I guess battery storage could be used but I don't know how practical that would be.

The other issue I saw mentioned is that whoever puts a nuke on the moon could reasonably declare an "exclusion zone" which would be similar to staking out a territorial claim.... but perhaps in a way that could avoid space treaty complications.

whose going to respect any kind of claim while endangering the whole universe

.... but in what way is anyone endangering the whole universe? If such a thing were possible.

will take our environmental destruction beyond even our planet. Thus affecting the Universe. The WHOLE universe a bit of hyperbole.
The universe will go on, be fine even, after human kind has destroyed itself.

.... would not cause any sort of environmental damage whatsoever.

sufficiently to prevent accidents, radiation leaks, etc?

LunaNet!

These are nuclear powered and foolproof?

.... they could monitor a reactor on the moon sufficiently to prevent accidents, radiation leaks, etc....

My answer is yes, they can (and will) monitor reactors on the moon to that degree. That can be done now, but the link I sent about LunaNet shows the next generation of space based communication infrastructure, focused specifically on the cis-lunar domain. It is in development right now, and I have had a small part in moving it forward over the years.

The reactors themselves will be much more fool proof than this:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

I'd be interested in how this thing will function--or not.

it just depends on the design of the reactor.

It does seem that a method of cooling a lunar reactor is still under debate:

It might be a lot easier near the poles, where the maximum daytime temperatures can be below the boiling point of water - see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103516304869
That might make some form of radiator a possibility.

But there is no need to send people to live in space. It is a waste of money and resources to send people to live there. Robotic space probes are fine and the new AI robotics will make them just as efficient as a human beings collecting rocks and samples.

Wants it to be a stepping stone to Mars.

figuring it out, as the boss knows how to hide loot like the bandit that he really is!

Wheee, moʻ moneeeeeee!!!Foʻ me!!!!!

This technology has excellent applications here on earth.

On the other hand I have great confidence the Trump administration will screw it up.

Furthermore, I don't expect natural born humans will ever have a significant presence in space beyond Low Earth Orbit.

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell

So how is building on the moon going to work?
Are they going to have to blast he's to anchor a building with concrete or something. Those shipping bills are going to be astronomical🚀

Never mind that the construction workers would have to wear space suits to protect from radiation and
to be able to breath along with needing housing.

There is no water on the moon (maybe at the poles?) - how would the reactor be cooled?
Who would be available to monitor a meltdown or other catastrophe? If the personnel there are killed, you can't get more people there instantly!
If the moon is destroyed or badly damaged, the Earth's tides would be completely destroyed - perhaps massive floods or tidal waves.
We do not know the full functions of our moon, or even if it is natural! Some old civilizations say that the moon was "towed into place." NASA discovered that the moon "rang like a bell" upon a heavy impact. Hollow? What could be inside? How is it that the moon PERFECTLY fits the area of the Sun during a solar eclipse?
Maybe we should think this thing through a bit . . .

This has been a hot topic here before!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122878972

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216096617

This is part of Project Artemis, a long term vision of returning to the moon.
Initial inquires for a power station project called “Fission Surface Power Project” were initiated as far back as 2021.
“ NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade
Providing a reliable, high-power system on the moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp,” Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the lab, said in a statement.”


https://apnews.com/article/technology-science-business-moon-idaho-ae35ae200a46bec0ca215bc88923181d#

Last month, under fears that Cheeto was cutting NASA funding, hundreds of NASA employees and former astronauts issued the Voyager Declaration, advocating continuing NASA’s research and exploration goals, which includes Project Artemis.

“ Dear Interim Administrator Duffy,
In light of your recent appointment as Interim NASA Administrator, we bring to your attention recent policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission. We, the signatories of this letter, dissent from these policies, and raise these concerns because we believe strongly in the importance of NASA's mission, which we are dedicated to uphold.
Major programmatic shifts at NASA must be implemented strategically so that risks are managed carefully. Instead, the last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA's workforce. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law. The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire.”

https://www.standupforscience.net/nasa-voyager-declaration

The Killowpower project was initiated in 2015. It evolved into the Fission Surface Power Project, for which contracts were awarded in 2022.

Didn’t realize it went back so far!
Wish people would realize this isn’t the brainchild of the current (clueless) administration!

no matter who first thinks it up.

Kinda reminds of those plans under the Eisenhower administration to use atomic bombs to dig canals.

Or plans to build nuclear powered aircraft. Putting nuclear fuel inside a jet--what could possibly go wrong?

And now they are trying to make the moon maga.

You can't make this shit up.

...while a number of fission reactors have operated in orbit - one crashed into Northern Canada some years back, as I remember - there is absolutely no good reason to put a fission reactor on the moon.

I note that the seismometer left on the Moon by one of the Apollo missions is nuclear powered, with a radiothermoelectric generator (RTG) powered by ²³⁸Pu, and almost all of the deep space missions have been similarly powered, they had a purpose and required low power. (The Voyager missions are now heading out of the solar system and still communicating on nuclear power.)

From my perspective this is a typically nutty idea put forth by these people as a distraction as the continue the engineering the collapse of the United States.

We need, desperately, nuclear reactors on Earth for now, not much else.

I note, with some regret and dismay, that many of the posts in this thread feature the usual ignorant antinuclear paranoia, including, if I read this right, blowing up the moon. One sees these things and one doesn't want to believe it.

Another very, very, very amusing one that I believe I saw in very quick scan is that a nuclear reactor on the moon would make the moon uninhabitable. Did I really see that? Um, um, um...

The moon is in a fairly intensive radiation field. All of outer space is.

I've been meaning for a while now to ask your thoughts on something, and figure now is as good a time as any.

What I'm about to describe is my principle worry about building lots of nuclear reactors here on earth.

I think that many of the technical issues that folks raise in opposition, for instance the issue of spent fuel and other waste have--at least on paper--technical solutions available to us today. There are problems of course, but we have the technology in place to deal with these issues, providing the funding and politcal will is there as needed.

It's the political/social/human issues, the ones I'm about to describe, that worry me, and which seem to me less amenable to solution.

I'm thinking, for instance, of what's happening now in Ukraine. We had Russian troops digging trenches inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, thus re-exposing dangerous materials. But even worse, in terms of potential danger, has been the threat to the Zaporizhzhia Power Station, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest plants in the world. For a while the plant was caught between warring armies, and as I recall there were concerns that a stray shell or drone might hit the plant, either by accident or deliberately. And it wasn't even necessary for such a strike to put the plant and the region around it at risk, since there was a period when the plant was understaffed--perhaps dangerously so--because many workers didn't relish the idea of commuting through a war zone to get to work. At least this was how this was described in the press.

And the idea of a deliberate attack on a power station isn't all that far fetched. Evidently the Russians fired a drone at the containment arch that now covers Chernobyl, punching a good size and thus compromising the air pressure system that keeps air from escaping in the event of a wider breach or accident of some kind.

You might say that we can try to build reactors only in regions of relative political and social stability. But how can we guarantee such stability for the time frames this would entail--decades or more, probably far more? Back in the 1970s and '80s, when these power stations were built, most everyone assumed the USSR was among the most stable regimes on the planet. And yet here we are.

I can't think of a single region on earth that has been politically and socially stable for the length of time needed here, aside from Antarctica.

Granted, any major piece of infrastructure is vulnerable to the ravages of war. Films of post-war Europe certainly bring that point home. But the effects of a nuclear plant being bombed or rocketed are so severe that even a single instance would be catastrophic. The only other example I can think of that would be at all comparable to blasting a nuclear plant would be smashing a major dam. The British did this to the Ruhr dams during WWII, which caused major flooding and killed perhaps thousands of people. But disastrous as that was, the cleanup was a fairly straight-forward affair, and those regions that were flooded now appear to be entirely unscathed. I don't know if that would be at all the case in the event of a similar attack upon even a smaller nuclear power plant.

I wonder: what are your thoughts on this? A while back you posted about proposals to build plants across Africa, which raised this issue for me, but even before that I'd been mulling this over as a concern.

Are my worries about this unfounded? Is there a way to construct plants so that they would be invulnerable to any surrounding upheaval--civil war or war between nations such as between Iran and Iraq, intense civil unrest such as we've seen in recent decades in Yugoslavia or Rwanda? And even if the physical plant could be made secure in all circumstances, how do we ensure safe levels of staffing for the life of any plant, so we don't see problems such as what we've seen in Ukraine?

A long winded post, I know. But for me this is the one huge stumbling block I see to building the number of facilities needed to replace carbon based forms of energy. All the other issues, like I said, seem solvable, at least on a technical level. But humanity is so unstable, human beings so often destructive, and the potential for even one major plant to cause widespread and long lasting damage should it fall victim to that sort of human depravity, I have difficulty seeing how we can guarantee with any degree of certainty that such an event could never happen.

Is this something that has been considered by engineers such as yourself? Are there any fixes for this that you know of?

Thanks for reading through all this. I'm very much looking forward to your reply and the possibility that my worries in this regard might be put to rest.

Best wishes--

N/T

on the moon instead of the White House?

No Sean, we haven't forgotten about Jeffrey Epstein, you can now tell him you tried.
Prepare for yelling and ketchup!

?list=RDgoh2x_G0ct4

Anything to distract from Epstein.

A project to establish a permanent base on the Moon that was established in 2017 (the idea dates from much earlier). The Chinese have a similar project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program

If we ever plan on colonizing the Moon, Mars and beyond, a high-density power source like a reactor is vital.

But we're easily DECADES from a sizeable research colony on the Moon. We could barely get our astronauts back from the Space Station