6 ms·
Thermonuclear pulse propulsion (a la Project Orion) can do better than that- up to 0.1c. And that requires no unproven technology; just a lot of money and a lot
by gliese1337 14y ago
Thermonuclear pulse propulsion (a la Project Orion) can do better than that- up to 0.1c. And that requires no unproven technology; just a lot of money and a lot of politics (and a lot of fission fuel to buy with that money; I dunno if it's more than you could actually get on the market or not, but it would definitely cost A Lot).
- philhippus 14y ago>a lot of black politics FTFY
- lmm 14y agoIIRC you're talking on the order of several hundred nuclear bombs for a single interstellar trip, i.e. a significant fraction of the current US warhead supply, but by no means the whole lot.
- arethuza 14y agoI think intersteller travel at sensible speeds would require rather more energy than that - the relevant Wikipedia page gives estimates (depending on the approach used) of 30 million to 300 thousand 1MT bombs which is, fortunately, a few orders of magnitude larger than any nuclear arsenal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propul...
- rweir 14y ago> requires no unproven technology what will you make the pusher plate out of?