Real talk: I love astronuclear engineering, and love the design process, but I can't WAIT until my dream job can become an industry: extraterrestrial/exo-gravity-well astronuclear tool and die making.
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Atomic rockets are great but I want to see the nuclear-powered hammers and forges, the asteroid-etching plasma gun, 3D-printed comets, and moon-sized ball mills.
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Oh, believe me, I've got ideas. Imagine an alloy DESIGNED around beta decay, increasing bond strength through curing similarly to how concrete curing is done - but metallurgically! Or RHU-heated dies. Or 3d printed blanks with internal dies which are chemically removed...
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Would love to see more!
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So would I! Tell you what: you hook me up with the sugar daddy that makes adulting not a huge daily drag on my time, I'll give you the inside scoop of what I come up with
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I get sucked into the rockets, but... they're just one application of a HUGE ecosystem of industry that I wish I'd live to see.
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Automated (no human required) nuclear powered hammer and forges !
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Oh yeah! How would you do it?
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Several big pieces made from metallic asteroid, big enough so the Orionesque nuke doesn't get it moving *too* fast. Slams into die, which might be the size of a few city blocks. Roll it back (or just let it bounce back?), move a new blank under the die, set another one off, ...
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Uh... That's a significant-fraction-of-an-AU forge... I'm down - cautiously, but I'm sure that it's possible... practical? Meh, no, but I think a nova-driven Orion is not outside possibility.
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I suspect this is too pessimistic, that it can be done on the scale of a small asteroid, but I haven't worked out the numbers, just spitballing.
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Honestly, the thing that springs to mind here after mulling it over overnight is interesting: large scale composite forge/explosive welding in a closed die system. No clue if this is a good ideaor not, but it's... intriguing.
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At least we have photon torpedoes, though most of us call them... Lamps
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