5 ms·
Don't forget the ever lovely Nuclear salt-water rocket [1] which forgoes the throw bomb out the back part and simply has a continuous nuclear explosion inside t
by marcinzm 6y ago
Don't forget the ever lovely Nuclear salt-water rocket [1] which forgoes the throw bomb out the back part and simply has a continuous nuclear explosion inside the ship. Highly efficient in theory.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
- pushrax 6y agoThis is one of the best Wikipedia entries I have read yet. Concise and relatively plain English. Clear description of benefits, shortcomings, and possible tests.
- flatline 6y agoI have to disagree, the intro is not very concise, and includes needless details without giving a really clear picture of what the thing is. The parent comment gives a better summary!
- m463 6y agoTerrestrial testing might be subject to reasonable objections; as one physicist wrote, "Writing the environmental impact statement for such tests [...] might present an interesting problem ..."
- bouncycastle 6y agoHow would such a rocket slow down? I'm assuming that it wouldn't be able to eject the exhaust in the reverse direction because the exhaust material is still fissioning!
- ISL 6y agoBy rotating the craft to point opposite the direction of travel and actuating the engine again.
- poopchute 6y ago(same way as all space craft)
- minitoar 6y agoAnd then just fly into your still-fissioning exhaust? Wouldn’t that be bad?
- jcranmer 6y agoWell, presumably you wouldn't be accelerating just before you want to slow down, so the atomic bombs wouldn't be recently detonated and their debris wouldn't be nearby.
- maccam94 6y agoIf you flip around and fire the engines to decelerate, you would be flying into the exhaust. Edit: Actually this hurts my brain. If you're going 1,000,000MPH and fire propellant at 500MPH in your direction of travel, it would travel at approximately 1,000,500MPH and you would decelerate below 1,000,000MPH, so you actually wouldn't run into it. There's no drag on your exhaust in space like there is in an atmosphere...
- minitoar 6y agoOh wow nice explanation. Thanks.
- ajnin 6y agoAccording to A. Einstein you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between two inertial frames of reference. Physics would behave exactly the same. So if you don't hit your exhaust in the first instance you won't in the other either.
- maccam94 6y agoYeah, I'm just so used to watching Falcon 9 landings where it's falling through the exhaust because of atmospheric drag.
- cvg 6y agoIn the paper, he recommends using a magnetic sail to slow the craft down from drag in the interstellar medium. Pretty fun stuff on page 6, 60 years to Alpha Centauri! Linked in the wiki or here, http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/nswr.pdf http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/nswr.pdf