Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Tue, 1 Nov 2011 11:58:54 -0700 (PDT)) it happened
Brad Guth wrote in
:

We do seem to have a fly-by-rocket lander gap, including the one of
our Apollo era that doesn't seem to work as we've been told. No
doubt those Long March landers will come in real handy, and we can
rent them for a million dollars per hour or per kg of payload (plus
the usual tax, insurance and fuel).

Btw, even 0.1 G worth of constant acceleration/deceleration is going
to make at least those most nearby exoplanets doable. Fusion rockets
such as those offered by William Mook should more than do the trick.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

I was thinking that if all those flights to the International Space
Junk Station had been used to build a huge nuclear powered
interplanetary spacecraft.... then we would not have to burn it up in
the atmosphere and endanger humanity with the debris, but could fly
to the planets with a travel time of only weeks.

An Orion type spacecraft (that uses exploding atomic bombs and a pusher
plate) is an idea that has been around for a long time and is technically
feasible, but would you want the treaty on the ban of nuclear devices in
outer space to be annulled?

--
Mike Dworetsky

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