Nuclear Pulse Propulsion
Nuclear pulse propulsion or external pulsed plasma propulsion is a hypothetical method of spacecraft propulsion that uses nuclear explosions for thrust. It originated as Project ''Orion'' with support from DARPA, after a suggestion by Stanislaw Ulam in 1947. Newer designs using inertial confinement fusion have been the baseline for most later designs, including Project ''Daedalus'' and Project ''Longshot''. History Los Alamos Calculations for a potential use of this technology were made at the laboratory from and toward the close of the 1940s to the mid-1950s. Project Orion Project Orion was the first serious attempt to design a nuclear pulse rocket. A design was formed at General Atomics during the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the idea of reacting small directional nuclear explosives utilizing a variant of the Teller–Ulam two-stage bomb design against a large steel pusher plate attached to the spacecraft with shock absorbers. Efficient directional explosives maxi ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon]