Well, you can't really see it coming.

Well the theory is a very large nuclear reactor powering the whole thing

Like with artillery, the first warning you'll have of a bombardment is a screech and explosions all around you.

Yes, but how do you get that reactor into space in the first place?

That's not easy.

So I basically have two ideas for reliable space travel

The first is to shoot a plane at super high speeds off of a railgun powered by like a nuclear reactor, and then once it's at like 60 miles have it fly the rest of the way

At like 6-8 km/s you should with the same ceramics needed for reentry be able to do the reverse and go in to space at these speeds

Ideally it would be on top of a mountain where the atmosphere is thinner and so you'd have less drag

You basically fly up 90% of the way with a giant gun and then fly the rest with fuel, which saves on fuel

Too complex.

Something like a space elevator would be really handy. Failing that, some sort of anti-gravity or gravity-reduction device will go a long way.

The problem is the amount of energy required to reach escape velocity.

Space elevator equires super strong cables.

The problem with most reusable rockets is that the useful payload is usually between like 1-5% of their mass, so if you could essentially bypass the need for a booster rocket by just shooting it up in to the air at super high speeds initially, you bypass the need for all that extra fuel, and thus can have a higher payload to weight ratio. A 10,000 pound rocket doesn't send 500 pounds but 2500, 5000 etc. or something of the sort. With modern day computers such a thing is far easier to achieve than it was before and we already have super long high energy magnet guns, just used as hadron colliders.

Graphene, whiic.

So there's technical problems with space elevators.

Problem is, graphene is hella expensive.

Graphene is the best idea so far. How many miles of that do we have?

Space elevators do require super strong cables; one way around this *maybe* is to have a very large like, ion generator powered by a nuclear reactor to counteract the orbital forces of earth and stay in stationary orbit, counteracting the spin of the earth, but it would consume a ton of energy for every second it was in space

Dunno, but it ain't a lot.

And how many strings of cable do we need anyway if we want 10 tonnes to the orbit?

But, yeah, practical problesm.

The second idea is a nuclear powered steam rocket, basically using nuclear power to do it. Nuclear powered rockets shows quite a bit of promise, but funding was cut like back in the 60's. Today I figure something would be even easier since technology, especially in materials, and theefore lighterweight materials, has advanced quite a bit

Since nuclear power is really your most powerful form of power, pound for pound, and there's not much inbetween hydrogen and nuclear power to get there, converting nuclear power in to propulsion is really the big question

Two ways of storing energy higher than chemical energy can normally is kinetic energy, that is something traveling very faster and, heat, which is technically another form of kinetic energy

By boiling water, ammonia, hydrogen or something at insanely high tempatures, you can use that as a propellant to luanch things. If inside of a rocket itself, it would shoot it out at high speeds

Thus a thermal rocket, designed a lot like an air pressure rocket or, boiling water rocket, allows you to use nuclear fuel to heat water up, or ammonia or something else, and shoot it out at high speeds relative to it's mass, thus converting the nuclear energy in to something that would be useful for propulsion

pure elecricity is used in engines, like ion engines, in space, or plasma engines which are nearly pure electricity, buttttt, the problem is the thrust is insanely low. In space without the atmosphere and with no gravity a tiny amount of energy building up over time means a lot, which is why the fastest thing mankind ever created used an ion engine, but it has no thrust, so it can't take off in to space and get off the earth in the first place

You basically need to up the mass of the particles going out of the device, to get more momentum, to get more thrust

Boiling water at say, idk 67 million dollars, something say close to the tempature of lighting, would allow you to shoot out superheated water, which would turn in to plasma, outside the back of the vehicle, at insanely high speeds with high energy, with enough energy to get high thrust for it's weight, much higher than chemical energy, and still use nuclear power to do it

So therefore, our most powerful fuel source could be used, nuclear power, to get in to space, but in a useful way that doesn't irradiate stuff

So at 10 million degrees, a kilogram of water would store about 300 times the energy of hydrogen, and thus supplant hydrogen in terms of energy density for the propellant. By using nuclear power to do this, whether onboard the rocket, external to the rocket or a mix of both, you could then shoot the thing in to space by using the superheated exhuast in the same way a rocket normally does, by designing a thermal rocket

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_rocket

Whow holy shit

Funding was reapproved this year, in 2019

This may be the future

https://archive.is/f22Fw

<:angrypepe:497157904743268363>

What in the fuck makes this nobody judge think he has more authority than the Supreme court

They already ruled on this