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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Nuclear Rockets
Message-ID: <5610@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-May-85 01:30:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5610
Posted: Sun May 19 01:30:02 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 19-May-85 01:30:02 EDT
References: <1839@mordor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 15

>	My question is, why were these projects cancelled?

Project Orion was ultimately killed by the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,
as you speculated, but it was already languishing for lack of support.  The
more conventional nuclear-rocket program was killed, just as it was getting
real results, simply because it was expensive and there was no mission in
sight (i.e. realistically planned, as opposed to passionately desired) that
would require a nuclear rocket.

Nuclear rockets basically died because NASA decided to use chemical rockets
to get to the moon, and all the ambitious followon projects that might have
provided later requirements for nuclear rockets got killed by budgets.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry