Wasn’t this the ship powered by pooping out nuclear bombs?
castironglider on
It seems implausible for human colonization of the solar system as some have suggested, but imagine using it to give the initial boost on a probe to Proxima Centauri? Unlike Breakthrough Starshot you could have more massive instruments and communications onboard.
Also it would allow an ablative shield in front in case the interstellar medium turns out to be too abrasive to allow any spacecraft to survive at any non-trivial fraction of c.
danb1kenobi on
Project Orion. Also, the Rocinante
Oknight on
Orion’s the dumb way to do it.
[Salt-water nuclear rocket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvZjhWE-3zM) is like a continuous Orion with a throttleable engine. It’s an incredibly great idea as long as you’re VERY VERY careful and have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the way of any functional abnormality. (but, of course, you can say that about Orion also)
A SLIGHTLY less insane version of the same idea is being explored now under NASA contract under the name “pulsed plasma engine” — a slightly euphemistic name that doesn’t emphasize that the “plasma” in the name is from bullets of fissionable material shot by a gun down a tube of also fissionable material — the “bullets” go super-critical as they shoot down the tube and magnetic fields push them out as they explode in little nuclear bursts.
4 Comments
Wasn’t this the ship powered by pooping out nuclear bombs?
It seems implausible for human colonization of the solar system as some have suggested, but imagine using it to give the initial boost on a probe to Proxima Centauri? Unlike Breakthrough Starshot you could have more massive instruments and communications onboard.
Also it would allow an ablative shield in front in case the interstellar medium turns out to be too abrasive to allow any spacecraft to survive at any non-trivial fraction of c.
Project Orion. Also, the Rocinante
Orion’s the dumb way to do it.
[Salt-water nuclear rocket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvZjhWE-3zM) is like a continuous Orion with a throttleable engine. It’s an incredibly great idea as long as you’re VERY VERY careful and have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the way of any functional abnormality. (but, of course, you can say that about Orion also)
A SLIGHTLY less insane version of the same idea is being explored now under NASA contract under the name “pulsed plasma engine” — a slightly euphemistic name that doesn’t emphasize that the “plasma” in the name is from bullets of fissionable material shot by a gun down a tube of also fissionable material — the “bullets” go super-critical as they shoot down the tube and magnetic fields push them out as they explode in little nuclear bursts.