/sci/ - Science & Math

Well, for all that people are against nuclear pulse propulsion, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, the space age won't begin before we start using nuclear propulsion in space. And the best and arguably easiest way to do that is via nuclear pulse propulsion. The B41 nuclear bomb had over 5 mt/ton ratio. Nothing aside from antimatter and pure fusion will come close to that. Of course fission pulse units also won't come near that, but fission-fusion pulse units for interstellar travel (or just large interplanetary) can approach that. Nothing else we have can get the specific impulse close to 10^5. Though even the conservative 2000-5000 from small diameter pusher plates would be enough for large scale exploration of our solar system. Even the more hypothetical future propulsion systems (Z-pinch and antimatter catalyzed fusion ) would still be EPP propulsion, just using magnetic fields instead of pusher plates to transfer momentum to the spacecraft.

The neat thing about orion style propulsion for insterstellar travel is also the fact that you can make most of the shielding and the pusher plate out of depleted uranium (U-238) which could then be bred into Plutonium and used to produce more pulse units en-route, while also providing power for the craft.

> "Even now the only way we could get large payloads around the solar system is by something like Orion, because atomic bombs contain thousands of times more energy, indeed millions of times more energy, than any of the chemical fuels used in existing rockets – hydrogen and oxygen are feeble compared to the energies released by an atomic bomb. So when you talk of sending hundreds of tons, or even thousands of tons of payload, including human beings, to Mars, say, that's the only way we could do it, even now. The space age hasn't even begun yet. I believe the day will come when very few members of the human race will even be able to point at the part of the sky where the earth is."