Is the USA using the space program to gather nuclear energy directly from the sun without atmospheric interfer

Question

Isn't that a logical use of the space program? Some type of "enrichment" activity for an energy source, provided it is stable enough to transport.

Answer 1

Brilliant, brain! No, no, wait, uh.... How do we get the energy to someplace where we can use it?

Answer 2

Yes. And no. It´s called solarpower and modern photovoltaic cells are a result of space exploration. But the US isn´t exactly using this technology as much as they should but a huge plant is being planned in one of the arrid states. Don´t remember which one just now. Arizona, Nevada or California.
As for using the light in space as an energy source for earth it isn´t feasible for several reasons. First getting the energy down here. Huge plants on the moon have been mentioned and the energy was to be converted to microwaves and beamed to earth in a concentraed form and turned to electricity in huge gathering sites. The rotation of the earth is only one problem with this idea. Another is that we would be changing the earths energy budget. Irradiating earth with extra energy is the same as moving earth slightly closer to the sun with possibly devastating consequences to earths climate.
Coverting the energy into another transportable form is also an idea. On the moon you could build huge nuclear accelerator (out of lunar materials) and use the electricity from the photovoltaic field to run it and use it to manufacture antimatter. Positrons could then be "packaged" in a magnetic bottle and transported to where the energy is needed. But if the magnetic bottle malfunctions during the transport it could cause a huge catastrophy as antimatter is highly volatile.

Answer 3

If you mean where do we get the uranium needed to fuel nuclear power plants on Earth, then the answer is that the Uranium originally came from an old star (not our sun) that exploded and left a large cloud of gas and dust, containing mostly hydrogen but also small amounts of much heavier elements, including uranium. Part of the cloud then collapsed, forming our sun, and the planets in the solar system.

Answer 4

The sun does not throw out plutonium or uranium...so I dont see how this will relate to nuclear energy or enrichment. Plus, do you think they can launch something as big as a nuclear plant into space and no one notice? NASA does use the sun to collect solar power from the sun without atmospheric interference though...but thats hardly nuclear energy, just converting photons to electrons.

Answer 5

Are you talking about actually going to the sun and "mining" it for nuclear fuels?

This wouldn't work. In addition to the enormous technical difficulty of actually mining the sun without burning ourselves to a crisp, the real issue is that there's nothing special about the sun's "nuclear fuel." It consists of ordinary, non-radioactive hydrogen, which is already very abundant on earth.

The reason nuclear reactions work so well in the sun, is not because of the special nature of the fuel, but because of the enormous pressures in the sun's interior, generated by the sheer weight of the overlaying mass.

We could bring home tanks of hydrogen from the sun (although it'd be much easier to get them from earth); but then the problem would be to create the huge temperatures and pressures necessary to cause fusion. That's the problem scientists have been working on for decades.

Answer 6

No. We might use solar panels to collect radiant energy from the Sun.

Answer 7

Not quite. NASA would not do it because of the high volume of protesting it would receive and even then their drunken workers would not have the intelligence to think of such a thing.