Favorite vehicle that should have been built but wasn't

Neutron weapons aren't restricted by treaty, but they aren't clean either. In fact, they're rather useless, their blast radius equals their kill radius. A pure neutron bomb would be clean (all radiation gone within half an hour), but it also wouldn't do anything for Orion, it'd only put out radiation, not anything that could propel a craft.

Hello, TJ,

you are right concerning the environmentalists. The problem with them as with all politicians is that they are always talking of in detail different thing as if they were identical.

When I quoted the book the german stronaut Ulrich Walter has written I included his statement that the nuclear drive of Daedalus would have used pelltes providing detonations comparable to 1 t TNT. This is muxh less than a detonation of a nuclear bomb.

Additionaly Walter was talking about 100 detonations per second - is that really required to luanch from earth too? Walter was talking about this amount concerning acceleration up to an intertsellar velocity of 0,14c

So it would be interesting what rate of 1 t TNT detonations would be required to launch from surface of earh.

But thsie wouldn't be neutron "bombs" because interaction to a megnetic filed is required.

The concept is igniting the detonations by a laser - can the laser reduce or eliminate fallout?

Having this concept in mind we shouldn't talkof bombs because its a drive really. This would make it easier to hanlde the environmentalists.

Some research is required concerning all this.

I was talking about Daedalus here - I would have to look for informations about Orion in Walter's book - but your words are sounding like both vehicles are based on a fusion drive.

Concerning fusion ramjets Walter say they probably won't work - i will quote him if wanted.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Hi all!

Personally, I would have loved to see the Buran-Energia system go into operation. The Buran orbiter was of a superior design and construction o the STS orbiter, plus the use of the Energia booster to achieve escape velocity without the need for engines to be fitted to the orbiter freed the Buran to have 4 times the capacity of the STS - and the power of the Energia meant it could carry the extra load too!

Sadly, not only has there only been one flight of the original orbiter (launched in a snowstorn, ironically enough) but the original Buran was lost in the collapse at Baikonur a couplew of years back - a sad day for the history books of the Russian space program... well, technically the Kazakh one as they own the orbiters and the Energiyas now!

Gary

Oh yes, the flying flapjack!



Haha, gotta thank the history channel for that one...

Oh, and cant forget the F-16XL! Come on, it definantly beat the F-15E...

x-33 smaller sister of Venturestar...

considering human spaceflight an operational MAKS http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm would be interesting. But when being slightly more realistic an operational kistler k-1 would be nice two