magnemoe

Not sure how good the ISP would be? But its sure to work better than chemical or nuclear thermal. Missiles are designed to be pretty small and so you can not use large engines like fusion or pulse nuclear on them. But this should work well i think, use an srb or coil gun to get missile a bit away before starting it. For manned, g-forces and radiation is an major issue I think also single use.

Its an fun design for an missile its give high trust and good isp for an simple design. For an missile in an hard sci-fi setting I say two main burns is enough. First and primary burn is to get you moving fast towards the target. The second is the intercept burn as you assume target has moved since you fired. This burn would be just outside effective close in weapon systems, so target fired its intercept missiles but still outside effective laser range. Not sure how you could aim this thing outside of rcs on the top to rotate? I would simply cap it with an armor plate, then an lattice up to an second armor plate at the bottom of second stage, repeat this for the warhead.

Agree, now Starship plans to do this on Mars, launch to Mars aerobrake and land, refuel at base and fly back to earth and land. And this should work if you have an working base and land close to it. You will loose the beam connecting the ships. Now it would make more sense to have the deep space ships stay in orbit and get serviced by shuttles from Mars, you want to land back on earth until we get orbital infrastructure for refurbishing Starship sized stuff..

Now i read about an theory that an water world with an very deep ocean and lots of flares or much UV from it star might become an oxygen Venus, the water in the atmosphere would split into oxygen and hydrogen, hydrogen escapes and you get lots of oxygen, the thick atmosphere increases temperature so atmosphere is steam and oxygen. You get CO2 but hundreds of bar of oxygen and without much geologic activity it will stay that way even after all the water is gone.

You could send an good telescope out to 600 AU to get gravitational leansing from the sun, you will get an image of an exoplanet like viewing the earth from the moon as i understand. And all the spectrum data, you don't launch the 600 AU mission unless you find something interesting like life as in an breathable atmosphere. Yes you can build an space habitats around it, but you can do that much easier around the sun and it will take some time filling out an dyson swarm, and at that level Casual interstellar flight == faster than light, else its an serious commitment even if you don't age, think elves. Now you could find intelligent life and you don't spot stone age hunters until you get low or land. Who would be the coolest thing ever but not something you go all in on. The serious at any cost target would be would be artifacts from previous more advanced civilizations. Story idea, one of the pioneer or voyager probes passed close to an asteroid with something obvious artificial on it like solar panels and / or radiators. So the space race don't end. Note that interstellar communication is not very hard for an large ship. You have an weapon grade laser on the ship, an way to modulate it very fast and the grandchild of Web as an receiver, the laser array at L3 cost way less than an million times the starship and is nicknamed the deahtstar and its an strategic weapon.

First time here, so went back 3 months and selected an random one @Lisias

Very sure EOD personel is not trained in disarming nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons require two or more very specialized detonators to go off at the same time, even the fire length of the wire matter. If one go off you get an dirty bomb probably with an radiation sike as its go critical before getting blown apart However its still detonators, but I assume they are much deeper into the nuke than normal bombs and grenades.

True, however Macron/sandcasters can be efficiently armored against using many thin spaced out plates or even foil, but it will be very effective against optic including laser mirrors. So you send out a swarm of missiles or rail gun rounds, then use Macron/sandcasters to suppress enemy defensive lasers.

Who is true, however one ship failing towards the target you abort unless waiting for next mission is an better option for you.

Bomb pumped xasers is very nice but still not missile range, they simply extend the danger zone around an passing missile, its still very dangerous 10.000 km out but this well inside secondary laser gun range. If we assume good fusion reactors is an thing who is pretty required for an hard sci-fi setting like the expanse. However engines like orion pulse nuclear get much better as larger they are and most fusion design has lower limit on size. So the larger the ship who more efficient your engine is, this makes the missile even weaker. More crazy designs like nuclear salt water or fizzler make more sense for missiles, missile or more likely its warheads will have an second stage, probably an rapid burning solid engine for an intercept trajectory. This is dropped and blow up into decoys while the warheads are stealthy and dark.

The mystery airships are fascinating. Airships was an new bleeding edge technology and they was popular in stories. So people believe they saw them, and its not implausible for them it was an secret military airship project. However military secret projects in peacetime back then was rare. Some students managed to get an tour of HMS Dreadnought pretending to be an African royalty. Dreadnought was an new revolutionary battleship.

Yes and the lifeboat part is the second reason why you want two or more ships. Its also why many of the age of exploration tended to use multiple ships but more useful in space as spaceships don't get separated by storms.

Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. Note that back then sea mines was called torpedoes, the self propelled torpedo was not invented until later.

No if not forced as in your homework is checked. In Norway this was true well past then you was 17 year old and the 9 now 10 year mandatory school is done. It was then don on your next level, you could then go for trades like an plumber or an academic track, with some overlap, its an joke in trade schools that electricians is more math heavy than nurses, who is likely true. You are now in an university or higher education position. Likely living away from your parents for extended time for the first time. No homework checks, no parents and a guy down the corridor has an moonshine still and another wanted to build an LAN. Think it was close to 50% fail rate first year. this was 1990-93 +-1 year.

Agree, you also has the danger that if something hit your magazine you blow up even more spectacular. Its an reason why military want explosives who is hard to set off and why gunpowder is so dangerous in large amounts.