Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Solar for firstcomers

Some excellent news for the first Martian visitors: there's a race between small-scale nukes and solar panels, and solar is now winning. At least - for getting an energy-supply OVER there.

This only holds true for the insolation available at the Martian tropics and, I suspect, its moons. But still: gram by gram, solar is better here. This matters for the first visitors. It also relieves Earth of the problem of getting fissile material into orbit where it's not, er, legal.

Later, Martians can probably find some uranium around the planetary surface or dropped in from an asteroid. Large-scale colonies might want these. The polar regions will want these; so will Ceres, I gather.

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