This Peacekeeper proposal suffers from a lack of “corporate memory” (“gov’t memory”). The Minotaur is the result of the last attempt at this.

When the government proposed turning Minutemen into satellite launchers, Orbital threw a big fit, complaining (as others here have noted) that the government would put small launch providers out of business, even if the adapted launchers were used selectively for … student payloads.

Hello!

The result today is that we have Orbital-topped Minotaurs at $20 million a launch, out of the range of most student payloads.

Hard to see that this wouldn’t play out exactly the same way with Peacekeepers, which use a first stage similar to that which Thiokol markets for small launchers as the Castor 120, which in turn power the Lockheed Martin Athena and the Orbital Taurus, which in turn aren’t really cost-effective and don’t fly a whole lot.

I’m sorry, do you want to talk about spaceflight or your own ideas about the war in Iraq?

Fission Thermal-Electric, a hybrid approach, can do a bit better than that. The idea would be use the H2 flow to generate electricity, exploiting nuclear heat, before injecting the fluid into the thrust chamber. After the propellant passes the reactor, it would be arc- or microwave-heated to even higher temperature (beyond the thermal limit of the reactor core materials) using this electricity, then expanded through a nozzle.

So the main problem with NASA all this time has been all the naysayers on the internet, and if we all shut up Griffin’s new architecture is suddenly going to become cheap?

TW/SNTP

For more than a decade, the Particle Bed Reactor (PBR) has been a capability in search of a mission. The nascent PBR technology promises higher operating temperatures than those of conventional solid core reactors such as were developed in the 1960s under the NERVA program, which can translate into a more efficient power generator, or a more capable propulsion system.

Despite these claimed advantages, proponents have failed to identify a high priority mission that would justify the expense of resolving the many remaining technical uncertainties. The technical risks of the PBR include:

+ Challenges in fabricating the high temperature fuel particles that are the key to this technology — efforts to date have failed to conclusively demonstrate that fuel particles can withstand the rigors of the reactor operating environment;

+ The low thermal capacity of the reactor core increases the risk of thermal damage to the core in off-normal conditions, or during reactor cool-down;

The particle bed reactor has been evaluated for applications that range from multi-megawatt burst-mode electric power supply for space-based weapons, to nuclear rocket engines for strategic defense interceptors and piloted interplanetary missions. Nearly $200 million has been spent by the Defense Department for development of this technology for military propulsion applications as part of the highly classified Timberwind program.

Beginning in 1990 the Defense Department, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization which sponsored Timberwind, began seeking support from other agencies for broader applications for this technology. In particular, efforts were made to apply the PBR technology to NASA’s new Space Exploration Initiative. This process culminated in the establishment by the Air Force of the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion program in late 1991, which assumed much of the work previously conducted under the Timberwind program.

…

http://www.fas.org/nuke/space/c08tw_1.htm

I am not sure that the statement is factually, technically true for radiation-hardened electronics at the bottom of 100 miles of earth’s atmosphere or high up in geostationary orbit.

Besides, the main line of sensors will
be the Space Based Infrared Satellite system. At any one time, Earth will shield half the lower SBIRS tier from high altitude nu-klar detonations.
The fact is, our missile defense sensor system might be able to survive such an attempt to blind it by means of thermonuclear bombs.

In addition to higher-tech lectronic radiation hardening, satellites as well as surface installations can be afforded additional radiation shielding by simple mass — armored satellites!.

There would be a lot of elctromagnetic noise in the atmosphere from re-radiating aerosal particles for hours after a nuclear air burst, but that EM noise wouldn’t blind SBIRS.

Anyway, what are the alternatives to missile defense? The alternatives are

(a) to meekly accept Mutually Assured Destruction Parity with China, Iran, etc.;

or

(b) a first strike if and when appropriate, perhaps using high altitude fission bomb explosions to blind the opposition’s air defenses.

By the way, I think Project Orion is a wacky idea.
On the other hand, fission-thermal propulsion using liquid H2 as the propellant is a good idea. A specific impulse of about 1K seconds may be achieved using fission thermal propulsion.

Contemporary US strategic and theater missile defense systems use no nuclear, nucular or nu-clear warheads.

So please spare us the pinko red herrings.