[extropy-chat] "Scientists feel stifled by Bushadministration"-alternatives?

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Henrique Moraes Machado <hemm at openlink.com.br>
wrote:
> That's the beauty. The nuclear spaceship would be
> launched not from ground but from orbit.

Irrelevant.  The problem is, how to get the refined
nuclear material into space?

> It would
> have to be too massive to be launched from ground
> anyway.

Maybe not in one go, but use nuclear-powered launchers
to send up components of the nuclear-powered spaceship
and assemble in orbit.  Just because you have nuclear
power doesn't mean you have to have only one vehicle.

> Then we first need the space elevators to assemble
> the ships in orbit. 

That would solve the problem, however, how would one
build such a thing?  NASA has proven itself
incompetent to manage large space development
projects, and no other space organization - not even
the ESA and other NASA-equivalents - seems to have the
funding.

--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
> Not going to happen until we can use a fusion drive,
> most likely 
> inertial confinement in a mag field.

Intertial confinement and magnetic fields are two
different approaches to fusion containment, although
they can complement each other.  Problem is, neither
one seems able to confine fusion for more than a few
seconds (at the extreme) in any experiment that's been
done to date.  (The sun doesn't count: that's gravitic
confinement, not inertial or magnetic.)

I wonder...just how blast-proof can nuclear pebbles be
made?  Can they be made to contain their radiation (if
not their heat) even after being subjected to the
forces of a rocket explosion, fall from many
kilometers, and impact?