In the early 1970's, the British Interplanetary Society proposed the Daedalus Interstellar mission to Proxima Centauri. Daedalus was to be an unmanned probe with orbiters and landers attached to study whatever planets were discovered in the Proxima system. The primary propulsion was to be a thermonuclear pulse engine. This would involve repeatedly injecting frozen deuterium pellets into a very large dome shaped chamber and hitting the pellets with lasers to cause thermonuclear explosions. The principle is the same as putting a firecracker under a can and letting the explosion propel the can upward. The BIS believed that a velocity of .1 to .4 of C could be attained by this engine. For interstellar flights on SR-2, I think such an engine would be a good addition to our engine inventory. Right now, the best we have in SR-2 are NERVA type fission reactor engines. These can not attain the velocity needed to make an interstellar trip practical.
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10.1k GSpace3.0 years ago
Project deadulus was an awesome idea and having the engine in SR2 would make it easier for people that are terrible at inter planetary missions like me. I wish the government had gone ahead with it cause maybe the uk might have a space program 😭
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Interesting thing is that their plans were based upon technology that they believed would be available at the end of the 20th century. For the most part, they were correct.