Nuclear Plane!

[Guts3d]

Link!

[El_Squid]

Don't you just love it!?!

I wonder if that lovely light-weight reactor could ignite other exotic fuels and perhaps be used in a deep space probe? Imagine how fast it could go, given constant, long-lasting acceleration and no resistance nor significant gravity effects.

[slgrieb]

Oh, if you like this hardware, you're gonna love Orion! Actually enough development work was done on the concept so there is almost no doubt the propulsion system is feasible, could be built with current materials and technology, and is reasonably cheap. By space travel standards, anyway. One of the coolest parts of the concept is that since the vehicle is propelled by exploding nuclear bombs, there is a minimum size limit for the vehicle and it is fairly huge.

[Guts3d]

Nice find! I read a Sci-fi story once where they used atom - pulse propulsion... I just wonder where the heck they store all of those bombs and how often they have to use them.( You don't lose speed in space! ) Prolly get up to a respectable percentage of the speed of light doing that.

[slgrieb]

I read a Sci-fi story once where they used atom - pulse propulsion... .

The first two that pop into mind would be Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's Footfall
Freeman Dyson worked on the project, and Pournelle apparently spent time interviewing Dyson about the concept, so the depiction in Footfall is likely to be pretty sound.

Dan Simmons's Olympos also includes an Orion-type space ship, though it's role in the novel isn't quite as heroic as Footfall. Worth mentioning that Illium/Olympos isn't nearly the turgid, dreary read you might expect from the Wiki.