Trump orders mini nukes

[Fake Messiah]

The Orion nuclear impulse spacecraft envisioned for interstellar colonization was actually the largest Orion craft that was considered.  The construction time was estimated to be ~4 centuries (subsequent vessels would have been possible faster) and the craft would have been assembled entirely in space as it was too large to launch from the earth's surface.  The propulsion modules were large, not mini, too, in the range of 25 MT.  And there would have been quite a few of them, thousands.  The idea behind the craft was to deliver a viable human colony to Alpha Centauri, around 50,000 people, and enough supplies to enable them to establish themselves.  I don't remember the specifics, but the craft would have massed millions of tons at launch.  In the nearly 6 decades since, some improvements on the design have been proposed.  Among other ideas, a segmental pusher plate, 'trimmed' during flight to match the mass of the remainder of the vehicle as the impulse modules were used up, a DU pusher plate that would 'breed' reactor fuel to be used upon arrival at the target star, scaled yield propulsion modules tailored to the changing mass of the vehicle, and of course, all those subsequent decades of materials science advances.

Well sure I had in mind something smaller, like a drone. I mean it would be pretty stupid to send peeps on 40 year voyage to discover that there are no planets around that star to live on it.

But yeah people will need to move to another star system because it seems a star Gliese 710, is headed for a close encounter with our Solar System which means it will push thousands and thousands of giant rocks that will bombard all SOL. So it would be nice to send deep space drones, like Orion, to see what is in the outer parts of Solar System and perhaps scout planets around other stars.