Medusa: Nuclear explosive propulsion for interplanetary travel

Because of the deleterious effects of galactic cosmic radiation, solar flares, zero gravity and psychological stress, there is strong motivation to develop high-specific-impulse and high-thrust spacecraft for rapid transport of astronauts between planets. A novel spacecraft design is presented using a large lightweight sail (spinnaker) driven by pressure pulses from a series of nuclear explosions. The spacecraft appears to be a singularly competent and economical vehicle for high-speed interplanetary travel. The mass of the spinnaker is theoretically independent of the size of its canopy or the length of its tethers. Consequently, the canopy can be made very large to minimize radiation damage from the nuclear explosions and the tethers can be made very long to mitigate radiation hazard to the crew. The pressure from the nuclear explosion imparts a large impulsive acceleration to the lightweight spinnaker, which must be translated to a small smooth acceleration of the space capsule either by using the elasticity of the tethers or a servo winch in the space capsule, or a combination of the two. If elasticity alone is used, the maximum acceleration suffered by the space capsule is inversely propotional to the tether length. The use of very long tethers allows the spacecraft to achieve high velocities without using an exceedingly large number of bombs, a feature unavailable to previous forms of nuclear-explosive propulsion. Should the political questions connected with an unconventional use of nuclear explosives be favorably resolved, the proposal will be a good candidate for propulsion in the Mars mission.