[fsloth]

Project orion was super cool and I warmly recommend the book by similar name by George Dyson (son of Freeman Dyson!) who did a tremendous job of putting everything back together as well as humanly possible for an ops with very top secret components.

Nukes can totally function as the energy for rocket’s impulse. Very small and very directed nukes. The directed explosion plasma wave hits a pusher plate, where very specific plasma physics play out - the plate is not vaporized but merely receives an impulse - and then there are dampers to smoothen the blow.

Half of the interviewed experts were positive it would work and half were skeptical.

So, it’s sort of sad they had to wrap it up due to nuclear test ban before actually being able to run actual tests.

The best part? The bigger it is, the better. We could totally have gigantic nuclear space cruisers that go to Jupiter in like a week (I exaggerate because I forget the exact orbits but with ISP from nukes that bastard goes fast)

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Yah, but that would also enable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer , wouldn't it?

[fsloth]

In the interviews some of the team members were concerned with proliferation of shaped-charge mini-nukes. IMO that's not a good reason not to do anything but not an expert.