Tin Can Summary

What is the only useful use of an atomic explosion? Answer: Between two suns. That is to say the mid 1960s treaties prohibiting atomic testing in space are not so relevant with the end of the cold war. This development route is the only way to deliver enough power. Containment is difficult but the testing mechanism has to "invented" since one cannot tether in space and hence would need giant conventional return engines

The Chinese invented gunpowder but it took Europeans to develop the cannon. Likewise the Americans developed the atomic bomb but once they had developed this "gunpowder" could not develop interstellar propulsion. Any idiot who has ever put a firework in a tin can as a child could invent such a propulsion system. Any child that has played with a firecracker in a tin can knows by experience it flies off. Only in space it can't be tethered and would fly off in space, getting faster and faster. So you have to think scale and imagine the pilot, shield and conventionally powered return engines. What for? Now with the greatest respect to Einstein would it be harsh to say that the theory of relativity in setting the speed of light as impassable is about as realistic as the theory that communism would create a worker's paradise? Nice idea but perhaps wrong. More importantly it prevents us doing the most obvious atomic tests in space since the capital investment would be in the 100 billions of dollars and unless you can fly out of this solar system and rob another it wouldn't really produce any return on investment.

If we cannot travel faster than light then not much economic good will come out of 14 years space travel to the nearest sun. The natural obstacles to development are the maturity of payload performance (say a minimum 100 manned tests are needed to benchmark the container/tube for the possible full 1000+ for an interstellar trip) so even 98% payload launch success would leave 2 test radioactive components falling back to earth. EMF signals as a test by-product would also damage some commercial satellites. However this could at the moment still be a potential cost that is insured against. However the promise of star wars technology may at a later date invoke conflict, since if any nation were to be convinced that manned atomic testing in space was essential for the future of mankind, staging a satellite war might be the way to engineer a clearing of the orbits of commercial satellites in preference to doing it with permission and paying compensation to commercial satellite owners.

Tin Can Summary continued

Hence I would say that before America leads us into the new era of star wars technology it looks very closely at that little boy putting a banger (firework) in a can. On a grander scale the atomic explosion when successfully contained (perhaps by thick steel-carbons) in space would provide the energy to travel beyond light speed. What else produces so much energy and does not need oxygen? Each nuclear bomb manufactured and stored is in fact an interstellar fuel pellet. There is no grand invention waiting for discovery that will enable us to travel to other solar systems. We had the grand invention in 1945 only we have made no practical use of it, except as a tool of war. Is it not likely that a little sideways thinking and testing in space of containment is the obvious way to release enough raw energy to power a spacecraft?

A series of video animation on how a manned atomic test in space would be conducted are urgently required. It is not a case of just exploding a nuclear bomb in space but is much more complicated since it must involve the use of conventional return engines to examine the integrity of the containment chamber (also shield in case of failure and a test pilot).