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Post Info TOPIC: Nuclear power in science fiction
Phil

Date:
Nuclear power in science fiction


Does anyone know about a single science fiction novel that implies nuclear power for starship propulsion?

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Dusty

Date:

I take by "Nuclear Power" you mean Fission and/or fusion!


Good question! Off the top of my head I cannot actually remember one!


I think that most Sci-Fi authers are sufficiantly knowledgable to realise that even fusion processes will only produce verry slow star ships


Orion/Daedulus is the only conceivable technology we currently have that could build a workable star ship, and that would involve pushing our knowledge and capabilities right to the limmit, and even then producing only a verry slow ship of 0.05C tops!


Generally Starships in Sci-Fi are either anti-matter powererd (a Possible future technology) or rely on "fanticy" technologys such as "Jumpgates", "Hyperdrive" or "Wharp-Drive".


On another note this means that (unless some way is found to "Cheat"), any practical starship construction, while possible, will be horredously expensive and would have to be essentially altruisitic.



Dusty 



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GoogleNaut

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James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" had a starship called the "Mayflower II" which was a space colony sized ship--a whopping six miles across!--which took a crew of 30,000 people to Alpha Centauri [this is why I like James P. Hogan--he rarely thinks small!] The ship was powered by gigantic thermonuclear fusion engines and could scoop up hydrogen between the stars for extra fuel. It's a cool story--I definately recommend it!

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a story called "Footfall" in which aliens that look like baby elephants invade the Earth. We fight back with twentieth century technology. The alien "Fithp" have small (destroyer sized?) fusion powered "Digit Ships" that they use against us. And humanity is forced to build a nuclear explosion [Orion style] powered battleship called "Michael Archangel" to face the aliens down. I won't give this story away--but it's a must read.

In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey," a nuclear fission powered "Discovery" takes a trip to the planet Jupiter to investigate mysterious extraterrestrial signals. Read the book and then watch the Stanley Kubrick movie. Later on, "2010: Odyssey II" came out. Again read the book and then watch the movie. Odyssey II has Russian fusion powered spaceship called the "Alexi Leonov" after the first human being to do a spacewalk!

Some older stories: Robert Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" had a nuclear thermal rocket that traverses the solar system.


I'm sure I am missing lots of stories, but these are just the ones that pop into mind right away.

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