Martian Legacy Chapter 5

 Jay sat in the classroom with rapt attention as the technician explained the workings of the fusion drive system. “Basically it is a controlled and focused nuclear explosion. Obviously we can't release a nuclear explosion on Earth, so we use traditional rockets to propel the vehicle out of Earth's atmosphere. Once out of the atmosphere the rockets will be jettisoned and the fusion drive will ignite to take you the rest of the trip to Mars orbit. The main vehicle will remain in orbit with the navigator and systems engineer on board while the rest of the crew will take a landing module to the planet's surface. You will have 12 hours to complete the on ground mission before reboarding the landing module and returning to the main vehicle in orbit.” As the technician droned on about the finer points of the spacecraft, Jay had pause to wonder just how well a nuclear explosion could be controlled.

 

As if reading Jay's mind, the technician went into more detail about the nuclear aspect of the spacecraft. “Weapons grade uranium starts as a solid when it is mined from the ground. During the enrichment process it is converted to a gas, then back into a solid to create the core for a bomb. For our purposes we use the gaseous form as a fuel for the fusion drive. It is less potent, but much easier to control as it is fed into the fusion engine. We start a nuclear reaction, then feed in the gas as needed to keep it going. The mechanism is similar to a jet engine on steroids, with more thrust available than any other engine we have ever tested.”

 

Jay could hardly wait to get behind the controls and see just how fast this ship could go. His only regret was that in zero gravity he wouldn't be able to feel the G-forces, but then again maybe that wasn't a bad thing. If the thrust was really as great as they claimed, then no man would be able to survive the forces imposed when fighting gravity. The technician went on to espouse the vehicle's safety measures. “We have taken many steps to ensure that the crew of the ship will be isolated from the nuclear fuel and the reactor. The entire nuclear component is housed in a separate module that can be jettisoned in the event of a major leak or failure. There are small back-up rockets to get you back home should this happen, but they have a limited amount of fuel so they are only good for near Earth malfunctions.” This bit of news was unsettling, but the crew did not dwell on morbid scenarios for long. Like most young people they saw themselves as immortal, so the thought that anything bad could happen to them was quickly dismissed.