This weeks Carnival of Space was hosted by Wayne Hall of the Kentucky Space blog (a site that promotes Kentucky Space, which is a non-profit that helps Universities, businesses and public organizations pool their talent to help launch stuff beyond the sky).
Interesting articles ranged from lunar lessons to laser solar sails to reasons why humanity is on the brink of a golden age (at least as far as space geeks are concerned).
The best post of this carnival however belongs to Brian Wang of Next Big Future who posted about Hyperion nuclear reactors:
(Next Big Future) The Hyperion Power Generation uranium hydride reactor will weigh fifteen to 20 tons, depending on whether you're measuring just the reactor itself or the cask—the container that we ship it in—as well. It was specifically designed to fit on the back of a flatbed truck because most of our customers are not going to have rail. It's about a meter-and-a-half across and about 2 meters tall. It will generate 27-30 Megawatts of electrical power from 70 MW of thermal power. This means 0.5 to 0.75 tons per MWe for the nuclear reactor.
While this small size would benefit many third world countries (especially in Africa), it would also make it a lot easier to establish off world colonies on Mars and beyond (as solar power becomes useless the further out one heads into space).
This technology is being developed by the Hyperion Power Generation company, who is hoping to have this technology ready in 2013 (a little over four years from now as 2008 is coming to a close).
Be sure to visit the rest of the sites mentioned over at the Carnival of Space, and if you would like to see your article mentioned in this weeks carnival, be sure to visit Universe Today for details on how to enter.
Update (10/22): Adjusted text color in blockquote.
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You can either visit the stars or watch them from afar.
But if you choose the former, you'll definitely get a better view.
~Darnell Clayton, 2007
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