DDE

And that's where you lost the plot. Such a design was offered in the mid-XIXth century. Problem is, high explosives tend to have lower energy content than rocket propellants. You're looking at an SRB, minus the casing that makes the reaction products go in the direction you need them. I reckon two-digit ISP at best. Why are you dodging a true Orion, anyway?

I think the very extensive ISS Treaty supersedes that. Theoretically Article 27 of Russia's 5663-I law "On Space Activities" can expose her to Russian criminal law as well.

(by 20 cm)

Spice mines of Kessel?

It wasn't. The initial ascendancy of jet engines was driven primarily by material science limitations - their turbines are exposed to a particularly harsh operating regime, and are still at the forefront of metallurgy, ceramics, and compounds my high school chemistry teacher thinks not possible. Perhaps the two significant leaps would be the straightforward axial flow compressor design - which shrunk the frontal area of the engine - and the turbojet, which counterintuitively routed some/most of the compressed air past the combustion chamber, with some examples being essentially ducted turboprops with a different propeller design. The lack of axial compressors, however, did not present much of a challenge for the initial designs, and the turbojet increased efficiency but was developed after the birth of civilian aviation.

Glushko said "twenty years". Of course it would. The Expanse has a distinct paucity of radiators.

And now we have another complication.

Unlike most here, I know that scene, and he's not using it as armour. Now, do tell me more about the spaceships plowing the expanse of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Can actively cooled spacecraft armour replace the high-temperature radiator array? @MatterBeam

We'll find out once we build Moon colonies.

Well, the theory for Venus appears pretty established - deuterium is less vulnerable to solar wind erosion.

Some words of caution about the latest statements at the highest of levels:

What, you don't want to play with some twelve-year-old wheezers that utter prodigious Shakespearian insults like

He just wants her zero-g detector.