[JPLeRouzic]

Thanks for your insights.

I believe you might be a bit pessimistic. The USA studied nuclear ramjets in the 1950, as well as thermal nuclear rockets. Russia has a nuclear propelled missile [0].

India is studying nuclear propulsion [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

[1] https://www.indiandefensenews.in/2025/02/isro-successfully-s...

[ben_w]

Much as I like nuclear power for deep space stuff, even put them in the novel I've never finished writing, they're politically unacceptable* where they're most useful: take-off.

Basically all the people going "What if 9/11 was done with a flying Chernobyl?"**, some of whom are concerned voters, some of whom are the engineering team, some of whom are the foreign politicians who threaten to put sanctions on you.

Once you get to interplanetary, ion drives take away most of the advantage, because of how many people are willing to put a few extra years on a mission in exchange for not having to care about the risks.

Still, incredibly useful if you can get past all that.

* outside of warfare

** Which is essentially also something that happens in my novel, as the intersection of accident with Newton's first law

[JPLeRouzic]

Please finish your novel, it looks very interesting!

> "What if 9/11 was done with a flying Chernobyl?"

I guess it's a PR problem, particularly with the perspective to have dozen of Starship rockets launched every year.

What do people prefer? A rocket that works within reasonable technological limits (a nuclear rocket with chemical first stage) or a monster rocket that works at the edge of what is physically possible (Starship)?