Yes, I told everyone what was going to happen when Trump was back in the White House: that space travel would be a priority, along with a lot of technology that nobody had thought much about until now. It has been revealed that, as part of the Artemis program, NASA plans to put a 100-kilowatt lunar nuclear fission reactor on the moon by 2030, which is just around the corner at this point. Only four years from now. It’s the first big step in settling space, as a reactor like this will last for about 10 years. It would be about the size of a small car and produce enough energy for a small outpost, including habitats, science labs, and resource processing, with some surplus for redundancy and expansion. When people first heard this story, they thought of a nuclear reactor as seen on Earth, with the large noticeable cooling stacks. However, this will be a small unit, and people will be surprised to learn how effective and independent it is. For instance, nuclear submarines can operate for roughly 15 years before they need to replace their cores, allowing them to remain operational for 90-120 days without returning to port. And then, they only dock to restore food. Their energy needs stay powered for all those years. That’s what we are talking about on a moon base, and it will be relatively easy to take off into space and start producing power. Remember when Elon Musk launched that Tesla car into space? This moon reactor will be about the same size and weight. This is the kind of technology that will allow moon-based employees to live relatively the same way they do on Earth. The power will be good and sustainable. And will be relatable. And it’s going to provoke a lot of good questions for people who will be learning about these things quickly.
I have been a strong supporter of personal nuclear energy, such as thorium reactors, for private homes. I have argued for years, like many of the technical innovations in health and science, that absolute personal independence comes from personal energy. And, going back to Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse and how electrical infrastructure was envisioned, we are more than ready to put a thorium reactor on every house to power it for 70 years without being attached to a larger, centrally managed grid. When a storm knocks out the power, we should not be dependent on a monopoly carrier to fix the power lines so we can have power again. But every house, like every car, should generate its power independently. Nuclear energy is the best way to achieve this goal. I know Elon Musk loves solar power, and I do too when you aren’t near any infrastructure that can produce energy. I have my current favorite solar-powered flashlight. I also have some camping equipment that is solar-powered, so you can get enough power to run a laptop and charge some phones while on a distant mountain. If you can get power from the sun, that’s great. However, nuclear energy is the way to go for clean energy that has some power behind it. And the technology is now available to provide every human being on earth with independent power for their homes. Just as there are cures for cancer, but our current healthcare system can’t accommodate the innovation without its destruction, so it avoids the change for its survival.
Speaking of cancer, you might have heard that honey bee sting venom can kill all the cancer cells in the body of a woman with breast cancer in about an hour. That is pretty big news, but not surprising. That is the case with most things; science has long been figured out, but the economic models for achieving absolute independence are holding us back socially. When people see us build a moon base very quickly that is powered by nuclear energy, and that its comfortable, people are going to be asking a lot of questions, like, why can’t I have my nuclear reactor in my neighborhood if it’s only the size of a small car and can give me all the power I could ever want, individually. This moon base is going to change a lot of things culturally for people, as it will eliminate the question of whether the Apollo missions were ever real, given the ongoing debate about the trustworthiness of government information. Going to the moon and establishing a small base will prompt many questions on Earth to be asked. If we can do it there, why can’t we do it here? And from there, the question becomes one about how we view infrastructure. Should all individuals own gold to protect the value of money, or at least have money attached to a gold standard, or can the Fed control economic standards as central planners? Is education more effectively taught centrally or through individualized efforts? And should we make everyone sick to justify the infrastructure of healthcare, because of the insatiable need it has for fixed costs to feed its bloated network of insurance and care that also has unionized labor attached to it? At the heart of all those discussions is whether our homes should be connected to a centrally managed power grid, and of course, the answer is no.
Most of what holds us back from tackling the engineering challenges of personal nuclear reactors for homes and communities is public acceptance, which has been shaped by all the infrastructure planners who have tried to demonize nuclear power in general. Regulations on atomic power are harsh, making it technically unfeasible and cost-prohibitive even to develop the technology on such a scale. However, nuclear power at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, or on the moon, where regulators haven’t been able to create such a restrictive environment, allows technology to develop in response to necessity. And we will discover that many of the rules we create for ourselves have a cost to innovation that could dramatically improve our lives. But it will be shocking to people watching just how quickly all this happens, and that by 2030, we will have a presence of human life on another celestial body. And they will be able to live much as they do on Earth, with nuclear power making it possible. However, people will be correct to ask why they can’t have the same technology on earth, with free, reliable, and robust energy, that is available off the costly grid on earth. And the answer is that they could. But regulations protect stagnation; they do not inspire innovation, and if you want to get away from the limits of human averages, you have to go on adventures where their rules have not yet made a mess of the world and attempt to use regulations to make easy careers for themselves. Innovation and independence are more frequent where people have not yet made rules to protect themselves from challenges. Many of the rules we have are not for the safety of society, but rather to protect the way people make a living and to shield themselves from innovative challenges to their established professions. And that many of the economic problems that we have are that too many people write rules to protect themselves from change, rather than embrace change in the spirit of adventure that might be acceptable on the moon, far away from government interference. However, in civilization, the preservation of old ways becomes the priority. That is why we still have dirty power controlled by centralized forces that behave like a monopoly and are unreliable, especially during storms. We could have done better if only we had dared to take on the adventure.
Rich Hoffman
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The first thought I had while touring The Millennium Falcon Experience at the Northern Kentucky University campus was that this fictional ship from the Star Wars stories would be the best way to travel from Earth to Mars, or the moon and some more distant destination within our solar system. I thought of Jules Verne’s great book From the Earth to the Moon where he conceived of the rocket design that would be used 100 years later when NASA would eventually launch people into space and land on the moon. Star Wars was much more than just geek fandom. While I had personally thought about sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from the movies most of my life, and never thought I’d ever get a chance to actually do so, when the time did come I couldn’t help but think of real space travel using the actual design of the Millennium Falcon to serve as a foundation for a fleet of ships that would take commercial space travel to the next level.
To me the most impressive thing about the Millennium Falcon Experience was that after only 50 years of film history fans of the movies have finally figured out how to make the ships that were shown in Star Wars, and now artists and craftsmen are able to actually recreate what we see in the movies in real life. The next steps become rather obvious at that point and that is truly exciting. The Millennium Falcon Experience at NKU advertising a new Han Solo movie was something I personally never thought I’d see. But after seeing it, and touching it, and soaking it all in—I have a feeling that we will all be seeing a lot more of it in the years to come. As I left that exhibit I had the strange feeling that I may just own my own Millennium Falcon in a few years that can fly to Mars and back many times over as routinely as we can now drive to Florida now in a car. And I think I would like that world very much!
The Overmanwarrior 