CAPSLOCKSTUCK
Spaced Out Lunar Tick
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| System Name | Party On |
|---|---|
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| Motherboard | DFI Lanparty |
| Cooling | Big tower thing |
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| Power Supply | Corsair |
| Mouse | cheap |
| Keyboard | under going restoration |
A public-private partnership led by a company called Technical Solutions Management (TSM) aims to start generating usable amounts of plutonium-238 (Pu-238) — the material that powers deep-space explorers such as NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and New Horizons Pluto probe — by 2022 or so.
This newly unveiled project would complement, not supplant, the Pu-238 production efforts currently underway at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), said TSM CEO Billy Shipp. [US Makes Plutonium-238 for Deep-Space Exploration (Video)]
Pu-238 is the key ingredient in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which convert, into electricity, the heat produced by the radioactive stuff when it naturally decays into uranium-234.
Most of NASA's iconic planetary-exploration missions over the decades have depended on RTGs, including the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers, and the Cassini Saturn orbiter.
The United States used to produce the Pu-238 needed for such spacecraft at the DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, as an offshoot of the facility's weapons work. (Pu-238 is not a bomb-making material, but its close cousin Pu-239 is.)
That production line ceased in 1988, as the Cold War wound down. The U.S. began buying Pu-238 from Russia in 1992 but received its last shipment from Moscow in 2010. Since then, the U.S. stockpile has been shrinking; NASA's allocation is now down to about 77 lbs. (35 kilograms), only half of which is usable in its current state, agency officials have said (though the rest could conceivably be brought up to grade by blending it with newly produced Pu-238).
NASA's current RTG design, known as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, requires 10.6 lbs. (4.8 kg) of Pu-238. So, currently, the U.S. has enough Pu-238 to power just three or four more deep-space missions. [Nuclear Generators Power NASA Deep-Space Probes (Infographic)]
The DOE recently started a new Pu-238 production program, which manufactured a 1.8-ounce (50 grams) sample of the stuff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee in late 2015. If everything goes according to plan, this pipeline should begin churning out the amount that NASA has requested — 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) of Pu-238 every year — by 2023, DOE officials have said.
TSM's production would supplement that of the DOE , Shipp said.
The company publicly unveiled its plans a few weeks ago, at the Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space 2017 conference in Orlando, Florida
http://www.space.com/36217-plutoniu...er&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170327-sdc
http://www.theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/2399769/nasa-restarts-pu-238-production-two-sites
This newly unveiled project would complement, not supplant, the Pu-238 production efforts currently underway at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), said TSM CEO Billy Shipp. [US Makes Plutonium-238 for Deep-Space Exploration (Video)]
Pu-238 is the key ingredient in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which convert, into electricity, the heat produced by the radioactive stuff when it naturally decays into uranium-234.
Most of NASA's iconic planetary-exploration missions over the decades have depended on RTGs, including the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers, and the Cassini Saturn orbiter.
The United States used to produce the Pu-238 needed for such spacecraft at the DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, as an offshoot of the facility's weapons work. (Pu-238 is not a bomb-making material, but its close cousin Pu-239 is.)
That production line ceased in 1988, as the Cold War wound down. The U.S. began buying Pu-238 from Russia in 1992 but received its last shipment from Moscow in 2010. Since then, the U.S. stockpile has been shrinking; NASA's allocation is now down to about 77 lbs. (35 kilograms), only half of which is usable in its current state, agency officials have said (though the rest could conceivably be brought up to grade by blending it with newly produced Pu-238).
NASA's current RTG design, known as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, requires 10.6 lbs. (4.8 kg) of Pu-238. So, currently, the U.S. has enough Pu-238 to power just three or four more deep-space missions. [Nuclear Generators Power NASA Deep-Space Probes (Infographic)]
The DOE recently started a new Pu-238 production program, which manufactured a 1.8-ounce (50 grams) sample of the stuff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee in late 2015. If everything goes according to plan, this pipeline should begin churning out the amount that NASA has requested — 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) of Pu-238 every year — by 2023, DOE officials have said.
TSM's production would supplement that of the DOE , Shipp said.
The company publicly unveiled its plans a few weeks ago, at the Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space 2017 conference in Orlando, Florida
http://www.space.com/36217-plutoniu...er&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170327-sdc
http://www.theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/2399769/nasa-restarts-pu-238-production-two-sites
