The meme doesn’t fit though, does it? This makes it seem like you can get fuel, engines and nukes into space and could just get people into space by replacing nuclear warheads with people. Not by using nuclear warheads.
The US launched people on repurposed ICBMs
Doesn’t fit the meme, but it somewhat fits the historical context of the cold war space race: send humans to space so the other side is scared of you replacing them with nukes.
Explanation: NUKES FOR PEACE
Project Orion was a study conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA,[1] and NASA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft.
Other Nuclear Rocket: NERVA Getting hydrogen gas really hot and ready to thrust (giggity) by passing it over a fusion reactor. Really fucking efficient.
That’s not what the meme is showing, though. Though, the meme does happen to be somewhat similar to the development of the rockets used…
One time we launched a 900kg steel lid at 6x earth’s escape velocity with a nuke. Just do that again with a space ship and we’re in business.
We’re going to need more memory foam
Project Orion!
