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legulere on July 5, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: NASA Revives Plan to Put Nuclear Reactors on Mars

How will they convert heat into electricity? On earth you have plenty of water as a good medium for the heat and a thick atmosphere that serves as the heatsink. On mars you have neither.

dredmorbius on July 5, 2017 | [–]

Sterling-cycle generator, utilising heat pipes, based on this study (PDF):

http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lare...

Tracked via Wikipedia, which has a brief article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower

jwilk on July 5, 2017 | | [–]

Non-mobile link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower

rocky1138 on July 5, 2017 | [–]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophotovoltaic

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