Slashdot Mirror
New Nuclear-powered Spaceship Design Revealed
Iddo Genuth writes "A U.S. based company introduced an
innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months) and enable future spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling. The system, which may dramatically affect interplanetary space travel is called the Miniature Magnetic Orion (Mini-Mag Orion for short), and is an optimization of the 1958 Orion interplanetary propulsion concept."
That's unfair. Gibson's "design" was loose speculation, whereas hard math has been done both on the original Orion and on this potential improvement.
Certainly, neither of them has existed in practice -- but one was wild speculation, whereas the other had (and has) actual engineering.
A treaty is only as good as the signatories. There is no particular reason why the signatories couldn't write and sign a new treaty that just specified that there were to be no nuclear powered satellites in orbit or nuclear weapons in space.
As that is more or less the intent. A spaceship that was nuclear powered would really only be an issue if it was allowed to orbit the earth long enough to fall out of orbit.
How do deal with all those explosions in your car engine?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What's the difference? An internal combustion engine is coupled directly from the explosion all the way to the road, well at least in a manual car. The reason you don't feel each explosion though is that instead of using one big one there are thousands of tiny ones so it seems like a smooth motion.
Even if this craft can reach speeds of 10% the speed of light we would still be limited to interplanetary exploration and exploitation (human nature dictates this). As far as interstellar travel goes it would still take about 45 years to send a spacecraft to the nearest star, not to mention the 4.5 year transmission delay. Still interplanetary travel is a big breakthrough if this article can be believed.
:-)
The real breakthrough would be an interstellar spacecraft (the realm of Science Fiction at the moment) and this would really open up our galaxy, however a person would have to live for thousands of years to visit each solar system in our galaxy for just one day even assuming travel between each solar system is almost instantaneous. Think "Star gate technology. Well I did say in the realm of Science Fiction
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And the President said, "Lewis, Clark, I want you to walk around the block of the White House, its plenty big, and there's probably a lot for you to see. When you're done with that, check out Virginia. Once that is done, I want a complete survey of everything east of the Mississippi. That should keep us busy for a century."
Lewis replied, "What about the vast unexplored reaches of the west?"
To which the President slammed his fist into the desk, "Slow down, Sparky, that would take lots of money that would be better spent on the vast wasteland of New Jersey. And, it would take a long time and nothing good would come of it, I'm sure. And, it would take you forever to get the results back to us. And, you'd smell when you got back. Hell, Clark smells already. Now, you guys do as I told you, none of that 'Vast Vision' stuff."
Knowing they were beat, Lewis and Clark resigned themselves to taking a walk around the block.
"Besides," the President said, "When you finish up, you can both do commercials for Lost Horizon Airlines."
Hey, why does exploration have to be serial?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.