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RE: Project Orion: The Starship Propelled by Nuclear Bombs
Oh man! This is such an exciting post for me. I had heard a tiny bit about propelling spacecraft with nuclear detonations but didn't know much about how it would work. This is exciting and it is so ridiculous that we aren't working on building probes with this technology and sending them off to exoplanets like you said. I get that people don't want it to be launched with that technology but the spacecraft was lifted with our current rocketry and then when it was away from Earth the nuclear propulsion system could be activated to take it to the closest star systems. It is unbelievable we aren't working on this. Can we please stop all the stupid wars and just focus our attention on this kind of stuff? PLEASE
Given the probe could send photos back to us within a couple decades, just imagine yourself as an old man seeing the first close up pictures of an Earthlike exoplanet with fluffy white clouds and big blue oceans.
Yeah I can imagine it! I'm sure you know a lot more about it than me but I got super excited about laser propulsion and I think with it we would be able to send small probes at an even more significant fraction of the speed of light. The issue becomes the power to then transmit the signal back on such a small little probe. It almost made me think we could send probes and get pictures back within a few decades. The scenario you posted where there would be a situation where Earth had to be left and we were all on these star ships living and trying to find a new home is crazy to think about. It sort of reminds me of Battlestar Galactica! I'm so glad I'm following you now or I probably would have missed this post.