[Pyro7480]

Nuclear-pulse detonation thrust engines work in the followng way: you produce a bunch of "high-yield" nuclear devices that you eject from the back of the spacecraft periodically, and when the spacecraft is a safe distance away, you detonate the device, and the shock wave propells the spacecraft. Of course, the spacecraft has to be reenforced for this, but the speed that can be theoretically can be reached with this is a lot faster than a conventional rocket. You only use it in interplanetary space, of course, because of the dangers involved. If you think the stink raised over the plutonium used on deep space probes was bad, if this ever gets off the drawing board, expect a lot of outrage.

[roadcat]

"If you think the stink raised over the plutonium used on deep space probes was bad, if this ever gets off the drawing board, expect a lot of outrage."

Outrage aside, it seems like the pollution wouldn't be too bad. Isn't there already a lot of radiation in open space? So nuclear blasts in space aren't really contaminating anything. So then you're saying we only have to worry about the danger of lofting radioactive materials into space from Earth (because of concerns of the craft breaking up in Earth's atmosphere and spreading radioactivity).

Then the solution is to mine the radioactive materials off-world. Question is, how difficult will that be?

[sit-rep]

Thanks for the reply gents...

Very interesting indeed. As stated to C2000, these detonations would need to be quite small, given the scale of Brett's first pic. Wondering how many "bombs" would be need for a trip to mars and back...

SR