Pusher Plate over Cannon

Pusher Plate over Cannon

What is the difference between a tube and the cannon? Answer: the pusher plate. In researching my ideas, I spent several days best thinking how to describe the test object as a tube or cannon. Cannon was an undesirable definition because of the weapons association, tube imprecise as it means open ended. The pusher plate concept (an idea central to the original Orion Project) brings into the English language a new way to describe the apparatus. The object containing the fission is a tube and pusher plate combined! That is cannon.

The developments of cannon provide much more interesting opportunity for comparative analysis than a pusher plate. Comparisons abound, not least that the modern cartridge is an ejected disposable unit reducing the ablation suffered by the musket etc. Why waste all the energy discarding the tube walls, only to run up to the all too predictable conclusion it would not survive but would be consumed by a fireball in any case? I However before laughing at “the pusher plate” idea, it may work as a short cut to place the cannon into space itself.

Space Craft Hull

How big would a nuclear engine have to be in order for the nuclear explosions be far enough from the life section? How many astro-labour hours would it take to construct something as big as the titanic? Astronaut labour hours are likely however to be expended in huge quantities upon re-fuelling the huge conventional engines necessary to return the pilot back to earth’s orbit. How many hulls would it have? If you hit tiny particles (or small asteroids) beyond the speed of light (e.g.200) will they pass through without interaction because they do not "exist in the same time and space"? Do ship hulls need designed to be as tough as possible (but more likely to split and shatter) or is it better to allow piercing of the hull in the hope it can be repaired?

Pusher Plate over Cannon continued

Any Planet, anywhere without flat theories

By a quirk of planetary evolution is our world doomed because of the geographic plates? Before 1492 we theorised a flat earth. "Not all any planets, anywhere" will have evolved under such a theory. If their continents were close enough together or arranged in a way much earlier circumnavigation would have been possible. So as Tess tragically concludes in Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'urbervilles" – it may be a blighted planet! Star Jump science needs to consider the legacy of the flat earth theory also in relation to other scenarios, not just how our own world is geographically divided. Do we learn from or repeat past mistakes more easily in the context of "seeing the universe"? How will civilisations evolving on other planets approach Star Jump science differently if there was no such established concept as a "flat earth theory" in their history? Has the wrong theory of a flat earth prior to 1492, reinforced our beliefs of limiting space travel below light speeds?

Theory of non-use is flight

With the ending of the Cold War we abandoned MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD was a very effective theory of non-use, effective because none were used. However the "natural theory of non-use" for "any planet anywhere" would be "Why use them for war when it is an invention that opens up space for travel and new resource discovery?" If we live in ignorance of this, are we are living in a political period of great global danger? In rejecting the original Orion proposal to go to the moon, NASA also seemingly rejected the only natural theory of non-use on this planet. I fear greatly we are out of line with the evolutionary path we should have followed.