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Auriga Drive

The Auriga drive was an early human concept for nuclear pulsed propulsion that was, functionally, the opposite of the ill-fated Orion drive (and quite possibly more ludicrous): rather than detonating a thermonuclear charge behind the vessel and riding the blast wave, an Auriga craft would launch the bombs ahead of itself and detonate them in the bowl of a massive, ultra-light, parachute-like sail.

Mechanism

The concept of the Auriga drive is relatively simple. Like its sibling, the Orion drive, it is propelled not by a continuous stream of exhaust but by a series of external nuclear explosions -a basic form of nuclear pulse propulsion. Unlike Orion, however, the spacecraft trails behind a large dome-shaped sail into which the charges are fired. The "spinnaker" sail absorbs the energy from the explosion via its radiation and plasmatic shockwave, pulling the payload forward with it.   An Auriga engine would have superior performance to the Orion design for several reasons. The sail intercepts much more of the blast energy than an Orion pusher plate would. Thanks to a complex system of pulleys and winches on the rigging tethers, its shock-absorbing stroke is much longer, smoothing out the acceleration of pulsed detonations. Additionally, all its major structures are held in tension rather than linear-mounted, reducing the weight of the system considerably. Lastly, the design scales down better than Orion, as seen in early Auriga-like nuclear pulse probes launched by the skae.   The Auriga design does have its drawbacks. Firstly, the scale of the spinnaker itself would have been near-impossible to achieve with Earth's early 21st century technology. Additionally, the thrust produced by the engine would not allow the craft to easily escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system, and the structure of the engine complex would have made an Earth-escape booster system impractical and difficult to properly engineer. The key setback that faced Project Auriga was deceleration on approach to the destination, as the forces involved would alter the tensile structure of the drive system. Such problems were surmounted in the early probes of the skae, but soon replaced by superior fusion drive systems.

Development History

The creation of the Auriga drive is generally attributed to Johndale Solem, who described the device in a 1993 paper submitted to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. In it, the concept is dubbed "Medusa," presumably in reference to the terragenid jellyfish whose motion it emulates. This paper caught the attention of engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center, who proposed the idea to their superiors. NASA began serious research into the feasibility of the design in 2007, when it was selected as one of the finalist drive system candidates for their crewed mission program to Mars. However, Project Auriga would not last.   Ultimately the Sagitta engine, which was further along in development and considerably more practical for the mission, won out over the Medusa design. Work on Project Auriga continued under the supervision of the newly-formed United Nations Aerospace Commission as a possible drive system for a future mission to the outer planets, but budgetary limits and the lack of a working prototype caused the project to be officially cancelled in 2017.
Engine class
Torch (unconventional)
Type
Nuclear pulse sail
Fuel
50-kiloton uranium-238 fission charges

Development History

Designed by
NASA
Conceived
1993 CE
Project start
2007 CE
Prototype
N/A
Abandoned
2017 CE

Engine Stats

Exhaust velocity
1042000 m/s
Specific impulse
106220 s
Engine mass
750 t
Average thrust
26,042 kN
Fuel unit mass
25 kg
Fuel units
30
Wet mass
1,038.4 t
Dry mass
1,033.65 t

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