I have a plotline I'm thinking of ending with a bang - more specifically, /lots/ of /really big/ bangs, in the form of a Project Orion launch. However, I also want to stay within real-world physics, and I'm looking for advice and suggestions.
Some decades after the Singularity ate all the cities and 99% of the population, Our Heroes, wandering around near Buffalo and Lake Erie, are likely going to get their hands on a 'factory seed', a small (non-superscience TL10ish) robofac that can Von Neumann itself into a larger one. Due to Plot, they are likely to decide that their best option is to get the bleep off of Earth; Ganymede is probably far enough away to avoid whatever gray goo gets released.
I've seen mentions a version of Project Orion which uses curium-245 as the nuclear explosive. By my back-of-the-envelope figuring, it would take roughly 15 tons of the stuff to get the necessary delta-v. Given that curium tends to be produced in microgram quantities these days, this seems problematic. Is there any theoretically feasible way to massively increase the production, or will I have to focus on the more usual radioisotopes?
Assuming that we have to work with either U-235 or Pu-239 made from U-238, and that any existing stockpiles were eaten along with the cities, the nearest significant source of uranium ore seems to be Elliot Lake in Ontario ( http://ift.tt/1LdHv1P ). Any comments on what it would take to go from post-apocalyptic raw nature to several thousand nuclear pulse bombs ready to go?
Some decades after the Singularity ate all the cities and 99% of the population, Our Heroes, wandering around near Buffalo and Lake Erie, are likely going to get their hands on a 'factory seed', a small (non-superscience TL10ish) robofac that can Von Neumann itself into a larger one. Due to Plot, they are likely to decide that their best option is to get the bleep off of Earth; Ganymede is probably far enough away to avoid whatever gray goo gets released.
I've seen mentions a version of Project Orion which uses curium-245 as the nuclear explosive. By my back-of-the-envelope figuring, it would take roughly 15 tons of the stuff to get the necessary delta-v. Given that curium tends to be produced in microgram quantities these days, this seems problematic. Is there any theoretically feasible way to massively increase the production, or will I have to focus on the more usual radioisotopes?
Assuming that we have to work with either U-235 or Pu-239 made from U-238, and that any existing stockpiles were eaten along with the cities, the nearest significant source of uranium ore seems to be Elliot Lake in Ontario ( http://ift.tt/1LdHv1P ). Any comments on what it would take to go from post-apocalyptic raw nature to several thousand nuclear pulse bombs ready to go?
Building nukes from scratch
