Traveling to other planets/stars at high speed.

[bigfoot3000]

I have'nt got a link but I can remember a little while ago watching a program about how this could be achieved and one of the methods was exploding nuclear device after nuclear device whilst in space so that the resulting "Shockwave" would push the ship at high speeds towards its destination. My questions are how big and powerful would these devices be, what protection would the ship have against the nuclear blasts, what kind of speeds can be achieved and what happens if the shuttle carrying the ship explodes whilst still in earths orbit?

[TTG]

I think they would use a conventional rocket to get the shuttle out of orbit and a safe distance before doing any kind of explosion. I do think we could possibly tap into the greatest energy source of all. It has more power than any number of nuclear explosions and that's the power of the Sun. Not sure how we could harness the energy to safely power a space craft though!

I think once we learn to get more from the Sun here on Earth, then we can think about powering a space vehicle.

[badhorsey]

There's been quite a lot of research into this. The most famous examples are Project Orion, which would use fission bombs to work against a "sprung" plate, and Project Daedalus which, if I recall, would use lasers to induce fusion in small pellets.

As I recall, there was even a proposition to launch the former from Earth - and this was also featured in Larry Niven's novel Footfall - whereas Daedalus would be assembled in orbit and launched towards (I think) Barnard's Star.

In terms of power - both spacecraft had a "pusher plate" which would absorb the blast and push it forward, with some sort of suspension to cushion the fragile beings inside. The blasts themselves - well, even a small nuclear explosion is going to put out a fair shockwave, I'd imagine.

I'd guess that Wikipedia would be your friend here - or any passing astrophysicists...

[wildwood]

I didn't think that a shockwave from a nuclear explosion would travel in outer space.

[squarebear]

I seem to remember reading that while totally feasible, there was some international agreement about not exploding nuclear weapons in space.

[dundurn]

I think that the agreement re nuclear devices was restricted to nuclear weapons - although from a practical point of view I accept there might be opposition from whichever bloc was not involved in the rocket research. Project Daedalus was commissioned by the British Interplanetary Society and I seem to remember also involved the collection of a large "snowball" of Helium 3 to be obtained from Jupiter. Daedalus was an unmanned project.

Any project like this would be far bigger than any shuttle could launch - most, if not all of the construction would take place in space. The question of radioactive contamination from failed launches has already been encountered - many American launches used one or other of the plutonium-fuelled SNAP batteries. The need to use the Lunar Module as a lifeboat on the Apollo 13 mission meant that this LM was returned to Earth and its SNAP-27 fuel cask was dropped into the Pacific.