NEW SPACE TECHNOLOGY GUIDE OMITS NUCLEAR POWER
The Department of Defense has published a new "Space Technology Guide" that
responds to a legislative requirement "to identify the technologies needed
... to take full advantage of use of space for national security purposes."
The Guide covers the familiar gamut of "enabling technologies" for national
security space activities from propulsion to communications to materials,
and so forth. With one exception.
Unlike practically every other survey of military space technologies over
the past few decades, the new Guide conspicuously omits any mention of
space nuclear power. Space nuclear reactors have long been on the
military's wish list because they would offer an exceptionally high power
to mass ratio in a compact, survivable form. Just what you need to drive
your orbital weapons platform.
But for that reason, they have also been a lightning rod for public concern
and criticism. In 1988, a proposal for a ban on nuclear reactors in Earth
orbit was developed by the Los Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap
and advanced as an arms control measure by U.S. and Russian scientists,
including the Federation of American Scientists. Other forms of nuclear
power for civilian space exploration have also been opposed by anti-nuclear
activists.
A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for an
explanation of the omission of space nuclear power from the latest planning
documents.
The U.S. launched one 500 Watt space nuclear reactor in 1965. Dozens of
reactors were deployed in orbit by the former Soviet Union between 1967 and
1988. The last major U.S. space nuclear reactor development program, known
as the SP-100, was canceled nearly a decade ago.
The new DoD Space Technology Guide is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/stg.htm
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