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A fusion rocket designed to travel 500,000 mph is under construction (bigthink.com)

submitted 1 year ago by btaf45@kbin.social to c/space@kbin.social

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Using nuclear fusion, Pulsar's rocket could dramatically increase travel speeds, aiming for tests by 2025 and fusion temperatures by 2027.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

By "fusion rocket", I mean a rocket that's powered by fusion reactions. Specifically fusion bombs. Project Orion was a proposal to build a rocket that had a plate mounted underneath it on shock absorbers, that would fire fusion bombs underneath it and be propelled by their detonations.

By "able" I mean we could build one right now if we wanted to. We have all the technology necessary, we've been building and detonating fusion bombs for 70 years now.

Have a look at the link, it's got lots of details.

[–] Flexaris@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Has there been any working practical application of fusion bomb propulsion? I'll admit I didn't read all of it but from what I could tell there were only plans on building something but nothing ever came of it

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In my original comment I mentioned the two main reasons why nothing ever came of it - the nuclear test ban treaty, and the destructive EMP and charged particle environment that would result from setting off those nuclear detonations in Earth orbit. Neither of these are technical limitations on the vehicle itself, though. If the treaty didn't exist and we didn't care about frying satellites we could build and launch one with the tech we already have today. But since those two limitations do exist nobody's exploring it further right now.