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Rogan Josh
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To shift topic a little it, I think it is all a matter of budget. I mean, I am sure we would all like to see enough money going to a complete and comprehensive Space Program, but since the US govt has a very limited budget for science spending what is it instead of?
For example, you may recall that the SSC (Superconducting Super-Collider) was being built in Texas -- they had dug 100's of miles of tunnel for it and everything -- when it was canceled for political reasons. This project would have provided as many spin-offs as any NASA project (remember one of the spin-offs of LEP in Geneva, was the WWW), but even more importantly it would have switched on last February. So now we would have probed energy scales up to 40 TeV (  ) and would know why particles have masses, what symetries the laws of the Universe has, whether or not there are large extra-dimensions in our universe, and have hints towards Grand Unified Theories, String Theories and M-Theories. 
So if you are really looking to back these NASA projects, ask first what you are throwing away to provide for them.
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TCO
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Richmond, VA
Jan 1970
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Just read it. I don't know; first off, I have no idea how you'd build a 0.1 kT fission bomb. Secondly, I'm really surprised the pusher platewould withstand hundreds of detonations of size ~20 kT. Third, I wouldn't advocate launching a rocket using nuke explosions; this sounds sort of wacko. Maybe a few flights would be okay using this method, but it doesn't sound like a long term solution. Fourth, given that the chances of a catastrophic failure of any launch vehicle in existence is ~1/50, it seems sort of crazy to put...umm...~500 lbs of fissile material on board such a lunch vehicle. I really don't know what the impact would be on Earth. Would the module containing the bombs be left intact or scattered for a couple of thousand miles along its flight path?
That being said, it's worthy of furthe study at least. Dyson is sort of known as an incurable blue-sky optimist isn't he? |
But the interesting thing is that it's existing technology. The issues are pretty much common-sense engineering ones. In particular, the materials issue you mentioned. I've been to the Test Site while they were still doing tests (underground of course). Their are some pretty amazing things they can do in terms of working with nuclear explosions.
Why so hard to beleive that they could desing a plate to take the impacts. That stuff is pretty easily tested and worked on as part of nuclear weapons research. Of course, most of the results are classified. But it should be pretty easy to envision some of the experiments.
Please note: I'm not an advocate for this. Or an Orion "nut". I just think it's fascinating. Sorta like how the SR-71 is the fastest airplane and it's 4 decades old. There is some cool **** out there. Like the Fulton Skyhook, etc.
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23-11-2001 10:15
with solar cells to get power+half thrust (thrust in direction of photon, no "tacking" possible) surrounded by mirror which gets full thrust (depending on which direction you want to tack in, thrust normal to surface of mirror).
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That's not technically correct!"
But how difficult would it be to track a probe with such a mirror so that it constantly points at it? How quickly would significant Doppler shift manifest? AND above all, what is the equation for the transfer of momentum from a photon to a solid mass? 
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