orion drive in vacuum how background the orion spacedrive was a theoretical concept it would be a drive using thermonuclear explosions to drive a spacecraft the idea was that you d detonate devices with somewhere from one to ten megatons yield behind a pusher plate attached to the main spacecraft the shock wave from the explosions would transfer momentum to the ship now in an atmosphere i can see this the energy of the explosion heats the atmosphere which expands explosively and slams a shock wave into the pusher plate but in a vacuum only two things i can see are going to hit the plate fission fusion products barium krypton helium neutrons evaporated bomb casing and electromagnetic radiation gammas mostly some light heat from irradiated fission products would this work i can t see the em radiation impelling very much momentum especially given the mass of the pusher plate and it seems to me you re going to get more momentum transfer throwing the bombs out the back of the ship than you get from detonating them once they re there i must be missing something would someone enlighten me via email thanks jim jim goltz alternet engineer goltz uunet uu net
