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A nuclear pulse drive starship powered by fusion-antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion units would be similarly in the 10% range and pure Matter-antimatter annihilation rockets would be theoretically capable of obtaining a velocity between 50% and 80% of the speed of light. In each case saving fuel for slowing down halves the maximum speed.
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 ...
A fusion rocket may produce less radiation than a fission rocket, reducing the shielding mass needed. The simplest way of building a fusion rocket is to use hydrogen bombs as proposed in Project Orion, but such a spacecraft would be massive and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibits the use of such bombs. For that reason bomb-based ...
In June 2000, Andrews Space concluded a Phase I NASA Small Business Innovation Research project on an iteration of the original Project Orion concept termed MagOrion. MagOrion introduced the use of a large, 2 km diameter, superconducting ring to interact with the plasma debris of the nuclear explosive pulses; replacing the mechanically dampened pusher plate of the original Project Orion concept.
Nuclear power sources could also be used to provide the spacecraft with electrical power for operations and scientific instrumentation. [12] Examples: NERVA (Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications), a US nuclear thermal rocket program; Project Rover, an American project to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. The program ran at the Los ...
RD-0410 (РД-0410, GRAU index: 11B91) was a Soviet nuclear thermal rocket engine developed by the Chemical Automatics Design Bureau [1] in Voronezh from 1965 through the 1980s using liquid hydrogen propellant. [2] The engine was ground-tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, [3] and its use was incorporated in the Kurchatov Mars 1994 crewed ...
[a] [21] [32] From 1957 to 1961 Dyson worked on Project Orion, [33] which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty , in which Dyson was involved and which he supported, [ 34 ] permitted only underground nuclear ...
The R-MAD Facility was built to support the nuclear rocket program and was operational from 1959 through 1970. It was used to assemble reactor engines and to disassemble and study reactor parts and fuel elements after reactor tests. [5] Project Rover was successful, but ultimately canceled.