"In short, this straightforward solution is far more feasible than trying to crack controlled nuclear fusion!"
The scientist standing in front of the desk spoke with intense animation, desperately trying to persuade Jason. The large group of experts gathered behind him kept discussing the idea amongst themselves, occasionally chiming in to offer a few rapid-fire pointers.
The entire executive office was as loud and chaotic as a crowded stock exchange floor.
Faced with this group of hyperactive scientists, Jason wiped the sweat from his forehead. With a hint of exasperation, he asked, "Exactly how large would a reactor need to be to safely contain a one-megaton... deuterium bomb?"
Limited by the physical properties of the raw materials required for nuclear weapons, small-yield hydrogen bombs were virtually impossible to mass-produce efficiently. Only pure hydrogen or deuterium bombs could be widely deployed without burning through rare elements, but the absolute minimum explosive yield for such weapons could not be reduced below one megaton.
"Besides, our home is still the Noah," Jason pointed out. "We can’t just keep digging deep underground tunnels on the Nix planet forever, can we? Even if we did, detonating high-yield nuclear weapons would constantly trigger massive, unpredictable earthquakes. What would we do then? Abandon the ruined site and dig another one? Keep digging forever?"
"And how exactly would we transmit the electricity back to the ship? Are the citizens of the Federation supposed to abandon the safety of the Noah and live on the planet’s surface? That’s out of the question!"
One of the senior experts immediately replied, "We believe it is absolutely necessary to construct a highly durable, super-massive reactor vessel. This facility could be built directly on the surface, outside the Noah."
"The exact physical dimensions of the reactor... will require highly detailed calculations."
"Yes, it’s absolutely necessary!" Professor Hao Yu shouted from the back of the room. "The bigger the better! The stronger the better!"
The heated discussion dragged on for over an hour. Amidst a chorus of voices advocating for a "bigger" and "stronger" reactor design, the fervent scientists finally filed out of the office, leaving the ultimate decision in Jason’s hands.
They had only presented the raw conceptual framework; figuring out how to actually engineer it would require endless calculations and complex physics simulations. However, with the Federation’s incredibly powerful quantum computers capable of running highly realistic models, they would simulate the plan as soon as possible to see if it held any water.
Jason shook his head, taking a deep breath to regain his composure. He carefully sorted through the mountain of information he had just been given.
Such a monstrous nuclear reactor was certainly not as simple as they made it sound...
A nuclear bomb was still a nuclear bomb. How easy could it possibly be to cage such a ferocious beast? Standard reinforced concrete and super-alloys were woefully inadequate against the sheer destructive force of heavy nuclear weapons, especially when subjected to continuous, long-term bombardment.
"A one-megaton yield is still far too massive..." Jason muttered.
The thermal radiation generated by the nuclear blast would be unimaginably high; it could melt away layers of the reactor’s inner wall in a matter of seconds. If every single detonation melted a fraction of the containment wall, the reactor would quickly breach over the years, making long-term power generation completely impossible.
The simplest theoretical way to mitigate this was to fill the inside of the reactor vessel with a dense, obstructive buffer gas, and ensure the reactor’s total interior volume was significantly larger than the nuclear bomb’s lethal blast radius!
This way, the most intense thermal wave of the nuclear explosion would never actually touch the reactor walls. By the time the blast wave reached the outermost edges of the chamber, the temperature would drop below the melting point of the containment materials, leaving the physical walls completely intact.
This is actually a solid engineering plan, Jason thought to himself. Using sheer, massive scale to reduce the technological difficulty... we could also use localized magnetic fields as an additional layer of shielding.
The internal buffer gases would absorb a massive amount of the nuclear bomb’s radiation energy, rapidly heating into a high-temperature plasma. This plasma, infused with immense kinetic energy from the blast, would spontaneously and violently eject from a directed exhaust port. As it passed through the port, it would drive a massive magnetohydrodynamic generator to directly produce electricity.
Additionally, the extreme waste heat left in the exhaust gas could be captured by secondary heat engines, maximizing the overall energy efficiency. Humanity already possessed highly mature, reliable technology in these specific fields.
Another major engineering hurdle was the ignition of the nuclear bombs themselves. These specialized spherical warheads required high-powered lasers to trigger the initial detonation. Could they use cheap, disposable optical fiber cables to deliver the laser pulse into the chamber?
Vaporizing a few meters of cheap fiber optic cable with every blast wouldn’t cost much... but if they had to sacrifice an expensive, precision laser emitter every single time, the economic cost would be completely unsustainable.
If they could successfully implement these workarounds, the reactor might actually be able to operate stably for decades.
"The core concept is actually brilliant..." Jason couldn’t help but smile, though his expression quickly shifted back into a deep frown.
The sheer workload, however... The amount of industrial labor required would be staggering!
Jason had already run some rough mental calculations. Back on Earth, a standard nuclear bomb with a one-megaton yield possessed an absolute kill radius of roughly seven kilometers! Therefore, the internal diameter of the hollow reactor chamber—plus the impossibly thick outer containment walls and the sprawling power generation facilities—would definitely need to exceed seven kilometers! It might even need to be larger than ten kilometers across!
The sheer physical scale of this proposed mega-project was absolutely insane, bordering on terrifying. A reinforced steel boiler with a diameter of over ten kilometers... that was significantly taller than Mount Everest!
A nuclear furnace larger than the highest peak on Earth!
After realizing the terrifying scale of the math, Jason couldn’t help but tremble.
After cursing under his breath a few times, Jason suddenly noticed a thick dossier left on his desk. Professor Hao Yu must have left it behind. He picked it up and read the cover. Printed in bold, stark letters were two words: Project Daedalus.
It was a theoretical proposal from the last century regarding advanced nuclear propulsion. This project wasn’t like Project Orion, which relied on detonating nuclear bombs externally behind a pusher plate. This design utilized internal detonations... inside a massive reactor!
The resulting plasma ions would be confined by a magnetic nozzle and violently ejected out the rear to generate forward thrust.
Professor Hao Yu had scribbled a frantic note on the first page: "The core fuel pellets, composed of deuterium and helium-3, will detonate 250 times per second inside the chamber. The resulting plasma will be directed by a magnetic nozzle and ejected directly from the rocket exhaust, generating massive thrust. Configured as a two-stage rocket, this engine could accelerate a spacecraft up to 12% of the speed of light!"
Yes, 12% of the speed of light!
This internal detonation method was vastly more efficient than the crude Project Orion. With Orion, the vast majority of the atomic bomb’s explosive energy simply dissipated into the empty void, rather than hitting the pusher plate to generate kinetic power.
Of course, Project Daedalus was infinitely more complex to engineer and had plenty of room for improvement. However, the visionary scientists of that era genuinely believed it was a feasible concept.
"This plan was first proposed in the 1970s. It is far more radical than Orion, and it represents the only theoretically achievable sub-light speed spacecraft drive using our current understanding of physics! Of course, because the required funding would have eclipsed the global GDP, it was deemed practically impossible to realize..."
"Humanity, when did you gradually lose your ambition and become so complacent in your comfortable, small world? All of our wildest, greatest ideas are relics of the last century..."
Faced with this sobering historical reminder, Jason couldn’t help but sigh.
Sometimes, reality was far more incredibly sci-fi than actual science fiction. When humans in the real world tapped into their boundless, unconscious potential, they possessed an immense power—and the key to unlocking that power was a burning, unified passion!
After the Cold War ended on Earth, humanity’s drive had cooled. Society became overly pragmatic, obsessed with short-term profits, and the collective imagination lost its grandiose, sweeping scope.
Jason didn’t know if that cultural shift was right or wrong... But they needed to remember the great dreams that once pushed them to the stars. The Federation were not just survivors hiding in the dark... they were explorers! They were pioneers!
Their grand dreams had not vanished into the void.
He fully understood what Professor Hao Yu—and the broader scientific community, was really proposing.
The physical concepts behind Project Daedalus and the nuclear bomb power plant were fundamentally identical. In fact... the two mega-projects could be merged and carried out simultaneously! After the nuclear bomb was detonated inside the massive furnace, the high-temperature plasma ejected from the exhaust could be harnessed for both electrical power generation and physical propulsion.
In other words, this monstrous nuclear fusion reactor would double as the main engine for a completely new, mobile planetary spacecraft!
These scientists were even more unhinged than Jason had imagined. They wanted to solve the Federation’s two greatest existential bottlenecks—"controllable nuclear fusion" and "interstellar travel"—at the exact same time, using a single, apocalyptic reactor!
And honestly... it seemed like a brilliant idea.
Jason smiled to himself in the quiet office. "I suppose this is the most brutal, heavy-metal way to become an Interstellar Civilization."