
Torchships – Atomic Rockets (2012) - curtis
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php
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taneq
The most interesting version of this that I've heard of is a "fusion candle",
ie a pair of fusion rockets mated back-to-back and hovering in the atmosphere
of a gas giant. One rocket thrusts downward towards the planet (ie. rocket
plume going upwards), ejecting mass at greater than the planet's escape
velocity. The other thrusts upward away from the planet, balancing both the
planet's gravity and the thrust from the first rocket. Together they apply a
net thrust on the planet, moving the entire thing along with any moons while
the rocket exhaust provides heat and power for the inhabitants of the moons.

[https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/36732/fusi...](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/36732/fusion-
candle-getting-earth-to-jupiter)

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pb82
This concept is explored in a video by Isaac Arthur [1] about colonizing
Jupiter (starting 26:35). The idea presented is to remove all the gas to end
up with a nice rocky planet.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnvjGN91Mg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnvjGN91Mg)

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eloff
I love his channel, but if we had that kind of capability we'd just mine
Jupiter (if we'd already used the easier to access resources) and build
habitats near earth where communications latency would be reasonable and the
sun would be a much better power source.

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Causality1
I have never seen a combination of such interesting individual pages organized
in such a horrific way. It's sort of like looking into an alternate universe
where the principles of web design turned out totally different from our own.

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DuskStar
That is a depressingly accurate way to describe Atomic Rockets. But I can
forgive it, because it introduced me to the NSWR. [0] And something that
_metal_ just deserves to be seen.

> The advantage of NSWR is that this is the only known propulsion system that
> combines high exhaust velocity with high thrust (in other words, it is a
> Torchship). The disadvantage is that it combines many of the worst problems
> of the Orion and Gas Core systems. For starters, using it for take-offs will
> leave a large crater that will glow blue for several hundred million years,
> as will everything downwind in the fallout area.

0:
[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php...](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#nswr)

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benj111
"that metal"

Mental?

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taneq
I think they meant heavy metal as in "that's pretty metal".

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DuskStar
Yep, pretty much!

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alexgmcm
This is one of my favourite websites. It has so much interesting and just odd
stuff.

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mothsonasloth
I tried looking specifically for details on biological shielding. How do you
prevent the crew from getting fried?

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simonh
Atomic Rockets is mostly focused on propulsion rather than other aspects of
vehicle design.

Aside from shielding, one way is physical separation of the drive system and
habitation sections. You can see this in the design of the Discovery in the
film 2001 A Space Odyssey.

~~~
DuskStar
> Atomic Rockets is mostly focused on propulsion rather than other aspects of
> vehicle design.

Are you sure about that? I remember reading some really interesting stuff
about effective limits of laser range there, and the sections list shows ~5x
as many non-engine pages as ones dedicated to propulsion.

