Billy M. Williams wrote:
> What about Nuclear Explosion drive systems?
Hexslinger wrote :
> The cheezy idea of using 1 megaton nuclear explosive is not only
> dangerously stupid - but relatively ineffective
I recall an essay about that in a Freeman Dyson book
(BTW 1 - Dyson, although a mainstream physicist, is IMHO one of the most
intelligent man alive !)
(BTW 2 - sorry I don't have right now the exact reference, all my books,
since I moved premises, are still in carboard cases...)
Anyway, Dyson told the story of a very serious research, in the 60's, about
propulsion of a spacecraft by a series of nuclear explosions in space.
According to him, it would have been pretty effective. But the project
folded, due to general mis-apprehensions about nuclear explosions, whever
they might be. Normally, in space, they wouldn't do much harm, but who knows
? So nobody's sad about the demise of that project, and neither am I...
Of course, as Hexslinger said, it wouldn't have been FTL anyway !
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Jean-Pierre Lentin
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