[ben_w]

If I was a dictator in charge of a tens-of-trillions of dollar-equivalent economy, I'd do that.

Unfortunately, I really do mean "dictator" as we'd need to sustain a lot of R&D for a long time (much longer than a two-term US president for example), and even nations can't afford to spend a huge percentage of their economy on long-term projects so it has to be a fairly limited % of the overall money supply for that period. And one needs to be extremely cautious, no speed-running: a nation cannot afford to have a thematic repeat of the Apollo 1 fire with e.g. a 2000 km long Lofstrom launch loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

There's three options for that size of economy:

• The US space industry comes in two parts, (1) a jobs program ("Senate Launch System" etc.) whose stated goals change with almost every new president, and (2) New Space (where Musk got the lion's share, but now he showed what is possible the whole world is quite capable of following the same path). Neither half of this lends itself to an R&D program on this scale.

• The EU is not one nation, it's a glorified free trade area. The EU's budget independently of the member states is nowhere near big enough to consider this.

• That leaves China; they could, I think, if they decide they want to. Will they decide that? I have no idea. Fits belt-and-road, but they may consider it a pointless boondoggle.

[JPLeRouzic]

Thanks for your insights.

I believe you might be a bit pessimistic. The USA studied nuclear ramjets in the 1950, as well as thermal nuclear rockets. Russia has a nuclear propelled missile [0].

India is studying nuclear propulsion [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

[1] https://www.indiandefensenews.in/2025/02/isro-successfully-s...

[ben_w]

Much as I like nuclear power for deep space stuff, even put them in the novel I've never finished writing, they're politically unacceptable* where they're most useful: take-off.

Basically all the people going "What if 9/11 was done with a flying Chernobyl?"**, some of whom are concerned voters, some of whom are the engineering team, some of whom are the foreign politicians who threaten to put sanctions on you.

Once you get to interplanetary, ion drives take away most of the advantage, because of how many people are willing to put a few extra years on a mission in exchange for not having to care about the risks.

Still, incredibly useful if you can get past all that.

* outside of warfare

** Which is essentially also something that happens in my novel, as the intersection of accident with Newton's first law

[JPLeRouzic]

Please finish your novel, it looks very interesting!

> "What if 9/11 was done with a flying Chernobyl?"

I guess it's a PR problem, particularly with the perspective to have dozen of Starship rockets launched every year.

What do people prefer? A rocket that works within reasonable technological limits (a nuclear rocket with chemical first stage) or a monster rocket that works at the edge of what is physically possible (Starship)?

[mytailorisrich]

The issue, politically and for the public, is not so much nuclear for space travel, it's launching it into space, IMHO. I don't think anyone cares too much if you say that you will use nukes to accelerate your spaceship to Mars (as long as they can trust that this is indeed what you are doing) until you say that this means you will need to build those nukes on Earth and, especially, to load them onto rockets to launch them into space because what happens if it crashes or explodes?

[ben_w]

> Please finish your novel, it looks very interesting!

Thanks, I've had similar positive responses from many people… unfortunately, spread over the last decade, because I keep finding it hard to tie all the bits together.

I'm better at world-building than plot, I have discovered.