Nuclear ground-orbit vehicle

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The results don't seem to have been particularly bad. Probably quite a bit like the hypothetical terrorist "dirty bombs". Scary but not actually any worse than equivalent high explosive (or in this case, having a big fast-moving thing fall on you).

Using it once or twice isn't gonna hurt things to badly, especially compared to the assorted nuclear testing done historically.

If you need it for emergency earth-to-orbit vehicles, fine. But if you regularly use it to launch satellites, etc, my impression was it will add up to a serious problem.