[00:02] bombs. The idea is simple. Drop a nuclear bomb behind your ship and let it explode. A steel pusher plate absorbs the blast and accelerates the ship. Repeat this thousands of times and you can theoretically reach velocities of
[00:14] around 50 km per second. In theory, the nuke spaceship could lift thousands of tons of payload and reach Mars in weeks or days and Saturn in around 9 months. Using nuclear bombs for exploration and not destruction really appealed to some
[00:28] scientists, but the risks were huge. You'd still need chemical rockets to lift the ship and its nukes into orbit and something could always go wrong. A nuke, but it could rip it apart and spread radioactive material over large
[00:41] areas. Even if the launch worked, there was another problem, slowing down. Turns out braking is harder when your engine is a bomb and timing wasn't ideal space during Cold War treaty negotiations wasn't a great look and the
[00:56] project died. Today, there are still some who argue that a nuke ship could help us reach the outer solar system, but bringing nukes back into space raises the same question it did 60 years ago. Just because we can, should we?