I swear sometimes 1960s tech still looks futuristic.

TIL that there is a nuclear reactor that isn't powerful enough to power my pc. I don't know what which one it says more about, but it says something.

Excuse me, sir! Can you direct me to the naval base in Alameda? It's where they keep the nuclear wessels

"So, what do you want to launch on this mission?" "A nuclear reactor with 93% enriched uranium." "Huh. That's pretty rich. How do you plan to cool that?" "Highly reactive alkali metals." "Hmm. Interesting choice. And your going to get it up there how?" "With a crap-ton of highly corrosive, hypergolic rocket fuel, of course!" "Solid choice. Hey...is that your car?" "Yeah! Just bought it. It's a Corvair!" "ARE YOU MAD?! THAT THING'S A DEATHTRAP!!!"

My father worked for Atomics International and worked on the SNAP 10A as a design engineer. He said it was an engineering marvel.

Scott I recently flew from Perth to Sydney, stayed a week and came back yesterday. On a couple of occasions I saw a group of pilots, all men, talking and as I walked past them I said, "Fly safe gentlemen." That is your influence on me.

My Dad worked at Aerojet General in Azusa, Ca. in the late 50's through the 60's. He worked on the Snap 8 project and I remember him talking about it using liquid NAK and highly pure hydrogen peroxide. I remember him talking about the danger using some of the chemicals used in the construction. I know He also worked on NERVA and the Mark 14 torpedo while at Aerojet General. Seeing your video brought back some fond memories of my late Father. Thank You.

I love all of those cool retro space animations. They were much cooler than the latest computer animation we have today.

I gotta say the AI upscaling on this archival footage looks *real* bad.

7:35 Plasma wind tunnels? That brought me to interesting web pages.

6:36 Yep, and lighthouses used mercury to provide frictionless "bearings" for the lenses, back when.

When you say "the (1960s) scientists weren't even done yet" I was honestly expeting you to tell us they were planning on using liquid fluoride as a coolent or some shit like that, lol.

Great job on the explanations here. As a nuclear guy, I'm always surprised at how many science content creators get just basic reactor stuff wrong. Yes, absolutely, nuclear geometry is VERY important in reactor design. Not only to achieve criticality, but also for safety and control. I find it interesting that they had hafnium in the fuel cladding. Hafnium is a big (BIG) neutron absorber and is often used in control rods to reduce neutron flux and "slow a reactor's roll" so to speak. Or shut it down by inserting all or a certain group of control rods into a core (aka SCRAM). Normally hafnium and zirconium are found together in nature, and to use zirconium in fuel cladding (Zircalloy, the most common type) the hafnium has to be processed out so it doesn't inhibit fission. Maybe they allowed some small amount of hafnium to act as a neutron poison? I'm not sure. It seems like with such a small mass of U-235, they wouldn't really want a poison. Then again, maybe just removing the reflectors wouldn't be enough to quickly shutdown this little core without a preexisting poison in the fuel cladding. I'd like to know more about this. All I remember from all of the materials stuff I had to study in school is that hafnium = bad in fuel cladding.

"plasma wind tunnel" just casually thrown out there

You do know, there is a fusion reactor in space already. It's been there for years...

1:54 I can relate. What I find critical about myself is also less the mass and more the geometry!

This isnt AI upscale, this is evidently AI downscale. My god, At First I thought I had done acid.

Hastelloy is one of the nickel based superalloys like inconel

A lot of people don't realize how pervasive the SNAPs were. Most people don't realize this, but when Neil Armstrong left the Lunar Module for the first time, he was actually going out to grab the plutonium rod for their SNAP and move it from one leg of the lander over into the SNAP to begin powering the Lunar Module.

AI upscaling can be spooky sometimes

IA image treatment is highly disturbing. Honestly, would have been FAR better to just put out a clean slideshow in there ....

For any space applications past Mars or in cold temperatures on Mars and the Moon, heat from the reactor is as valuable as the electricity.

Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up.

This tiny reactor is quite something! Thanks for sharing this with us!💛

The upscaling/ai? on the old videos is really really bad. would have been better off leaving them as is.

Love your history of space/rocketry videos. Well done!

I love these stories, Scott. Please never stop.

Thank you for all the hard work in making these excellent videos.

1:30 Ah, the good old times, when you worked with beryllium with no face mask and putting the fuel rods using simple gloves...

good video as always but the AI upscaling on the old footage looks absolutely awful

The research was not abandoned, just slowed waiting for a brighter future to emerge

I worked at the facility that probably refined the uranium and made the fuel rods. It was a DOE site near Cincinnati called FMPC (Feed Materials Production Center).

Great video, Scott...👍

exceptional video. this was super interesting!

13:00 Love the hand drawn "animations" they used to use.

6:28 Love the architecture of the Vandenberg entry gate

Great video Scott. I don't know of anybody else who would enlighten us with topics of space interest like this that don't quite have the entertainment value some space fans look to see.

I think the risk of unintentional contamination from leaking mercury coolant would easily be offset by higher efficiency in coal fired power plants since coal contains lead, mercury, uranium, etc. which were all released as part of the normal operation of the plants. My favorite rebuttal for anti-nuclear crazies is that they did nothing about coal plants, each or which put more radioactive contamination into the environment each year than all Western accidents did total over more than half a century of operations.

What is going on with the faces and fingers in the clips after 2:00? Is there AI coloring going on here? It looks very odd.

Fascinating history indeed! Thanks, Scott! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

Thanks Scott, for pronouncing "niche" correctly.

Hastelloy is a nickel based superalloy. It was one of the first superalloys developed, primarily for use in jet turbine blades.

Thank you for ripping this story out of the darkness of history 😊

Hey Scott, thanks for this history episode. I really enjoy them. This gives me a chance to relate a story my Dad told me. He worked for the company that built the first ion engine that was flown into space. I don't remember that it went up with the Snap reactor. The company was Electro Optical Systems, EOS, in Pasadena California. The ion engine was built under a contract from MIT, or some university like that. Like you said, when the engine was in space and turned on for testing, the high voltage power supply arced and shorted out. The power supply was in some kind of sealed container that kept some of the air inside. Ground testing showed no problems because air is a good insulator at atmospheric pressure. In flight, the container leaked sir down to a pressure where the air ionized when the power supply was turned on Lesson learned; next engine had ports to bleed out the air. Twenty or so years ago I went online to search for any information on the engine. I think the Smithsonian had a copy of it. Plus, they had an experimental ion engine made by Dr. Robert Goddard. It seems that the concept for an ion engine has been around for a long time!

That was pretty interesting, thanks Scott.

What great history! Thank you Scotty! Amazing science.

That is really great stuff THANKS.

Great report.

"Launched into a high stable orbit for safety" vs "Soviets used reactors in low orbit for drag reasons" is a hilarious juxtaposition.

Hey thanks for the info, more than I ever knew. I worked at SLC4 for Lockheed at the time and spent many months preparing for the launch. Mostly I worked the ground telemetry systems and the SNAP was different than any other program, the telemetry as I recall was PAM instead of the usual at that time which was FM/FM with commutators. Lots of overtime. Lots of different sensors on the pad to make sure nothing was leaking and we all wore radiation badges. I was just a kid so fun for me. Thanks.

Very interesting as usual! Have you considered doing some videos looking at the development and use of RTGs in spaceflight?

Humans are despising a safe and reliable source of energy. Nuclear.

The AI upscaling used in this made some of the people look like real horror monsters. Especially at around 6:10.

I like how stable this old launch footage is compared to the shaky-wobble-fest we have have these days.

Scott Manley: Notice how big the radiators have to be in space. Stanley Kubrick: Nope.

Great video as always scott. I'd like to add that hastelloy is an alloy of nickel and chromium (allong with some other stuff like iron and molybdenum). Fly safe

Superb video Scott. I wish they select you for space mission

Interesting video, I lived through most all of this and don't recall much of it ever getting into the news. But then when NASA publically announced that they were going to launch a reactor, there were demonstrations.

this episode is gold. at 14:22 was one of the several times i had to 'stop 'rewind and hear that agai n!!!. serious mad ideas from science / inventors playing. strewth, cheers. great show. i do have a rocket engine topic you probably can explain real quick . Rocket engines Push, How is the push connected the structure? and then maintain vectoring?

awesome video

My father worked at this company, Atomics International, in Canoga Park, CA during this period. You can see the AI logo on some of the lab coats. It was a division of North American Aviation at the time and later merged with Rockwell to become North American Rockwell. I worked there as a summer intern for two summers in the late 70’s on my summer breaks from college, By coincidence occasionally getting to work with my dad in a professional capacity. It was a real highlight of my life.

Wow, that was interesting!

some of the attempts at ai upscaling in this video look absolutely terrifying idk what's going on with that

one more important thing about NaK, if it comes in contact with water, its EXTREMELY explosive, so please know what you are doing with it!

cheers,again !

Thermocouples or Thermopiles? From my memory Thermocouples are used for millivolt temp measurement while Thermopiles can be used to generate a usable power for low power devices. I guess with enough in series/parallel you could power anything?

this is a really interesting set of projects, very cutting edge for the 60s. seems like we've hardly made progress since then though I'm sure we're more capable now.

Fascinating!

There's nothing like 1960s animation that brings back sweet memories of my childhood.

3:00 : Hastelloy is a standard nickel-based superalloy, with chromium and molybdenum being the main alloying elements. It does not contain hafnium nor tungsten, as far as I'm aware.

9:14 Take that beautiful view of a huge diffusion vacuum pump on the left...

"and the coolant for the reactor... well, it's kinda cool"

NaK is back babyyyyyy!!!!

They we bold and tried so many futuristic things back then. The Nerva engine for an example . thanks for sharing this story . Imagine if they had achieved 50% efficiency ? 25Kw could be of so much use for remote outpost . like the one being planned on Mars and Moon. Mercury vapor spinning turbines would have be so cool

Amaziing video

I have a copy of an AEC brochure regarding the SNAP program from the mid-‘60s.

The 1960's (and, to a lesser degree, the pre-sixties) really was the craziest decade. I'm assuming that in the clip you first showed when talking about NaK, the guy is just casually shaking chunks of Sodium or Potassium metal out of that HUGE can. No gloves, no forced ventilation or fume hood, and who knows if he was wearing eyepro.

Good video, good subject. My father was one of the first nuclear physicist in Europe, got his Phd in the states after the war. Built a 2 meter diameter mini CERN in a Amsterdam residence… (Those were the days 😁) . He was so hopeful of the nuclear possibilities…. Free energy for all mankind! But - in hindsight - it was IT that was the most promising field at the time. I guess ‘nuclear’ will get its role eventually, but after we have learned production quality control (cars don’t rust anymore…😊)! I wish I could have a peek in 2150, just to see how it developed. Anyway, still have a chance to see a person on the moon or maybe mars! 👍😊

Lets not use AI upscaling... Just use the original footage please.

I believe that the alloy "Hastelloy" is a trademark for one of the inconel alloys.

As a nuclear engineering student, this is the exact kind of thing I want to work on. Nuclear propulsion and power for space vehicles is absolutely fascinating to me.

OH SNAP!

The AI "enhanced" oldschoold footage looks way worse than it did originally. Great clip anyway !

Love that 5 MPH sign.

Between this, Project Rover, NERVA, Timberwind, Prometheus, and the new Lunar kWe reactors, we really have a lot of heritage and modern studies that demonstrate this technology as very very capable of space propulsion and power conversion systems.

I would love to see this reactor design applied to a portable power plant that could power neighborhoods from a facility. The size of maybe 2 shipping containers. With one container, holding all of the core reactor components and the other reactor holding a Rankin cycle steam turbine system. Powered by the reactor.

At a power level of only 30 kW and an operating time in space of barely a month, the burnup fraction of such a reactor was very, VERY low, barely half a percent of the burnup of normal reactor fuel in a PWR; and so while definitely still dangerously radioactive, the core of this reactor would have been *nowhere near* as intensely, fatally radioactive as normal spent fuel rods glowing in their cooling pool at the average nuclear power plant. Well over half a century now since it was operational, the radiation level will be far lower still than when it was shut down and while I wouldn't want it landing on my house or burning up in the sky over my city, the radiation doses to people on the ground if it did so today would be almost immeasurably minuscule.

Send up a module with an experimental plasma drive and use the electricity generated by the reactor to slowly boost the reactor into a solar insertion

SNAP was developed at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, at the eastern end of Simi Valley CA. The same place where they did static tests of the early rocket engines. It wasn't the only sodium-cooled reactor. There was also the "Sodium Reactor Experiment," a prototype for commercial nuclear power plants. That reactor did have an accident that released radioactive steam into the air (something people claim is still contaminating the area - who knew steam could stick around that long?).

"It'll stay up there in orbit for another 1000 years, giving us enough time to figure out how to dispose of it before it burns up in the atmosphere." -- sure, unless it'll be caught up in the Kessler syndrome.

Scott, since you mentioned the Soviet spacecraft, maybe you can do a video on the one that crashed in Canada in the 70s and basically scattered its reactor core over the northern wilderness.

It's worth noting that RTG:s and other technologies that rely on natural decay are not considered nuclear reactors even if they use nuclear energy. To be a proper reactor, you have to utilize controlled neutron induced fission. I guess fusion would also count but they are a class of their own.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be the bloke turning fuel rods on a lathe!

With modern thermoelectrics and fuel that has already passed the hazard of launch, someone really should put this to good use even if it's just a heater for something going to deep space.

I have a book called "Wonders of modern world engineering" written in the 1930s. It talks about the boiling mercury power stations (in particular one near New York) and the difficulties of containing high temperature high pressure mercury. All this with 1930s boiler making tech 😮 Give me nuclear power plants any day

"Critical geometry" Yes! Scott gets it! I studied nuclear power both in college and the Navy, and hearing someone say, "Critical mass," makes me cringe almost as much as hearing someone say, "Knots per hour."

Speaking of the Agena-Atlas rocket, Homemade Documentaries has released Gemini part 2, covering Gemini missions 6-12, along with the associated Agena missions. 2 hrs 43 minutes of wonderful NASA video and history.

This was back when the U.S. was still conducting nuclear tests as part of "Project Plowshare," one of the worst ideas in modern human history. The idea was to use nuclear explosions to excavate civilian construction projects. One proposed use was to expand an underground aquifer so that the then-irradiated water could be used to irrigate crops for human consumption. Others included using many bombs to dig second canals in Panama and Suez. Genius! Thankfully, they never did anything besides testing. I'm always mystified why it took humanity at least 20 years after 1945 to comprehend that nuclear fallout was unhealthy.

Video #2 of asking for a video on the Decadal Survey, Uranus orbiter mission, and the plutonium shortage

That AI upscale is horrible