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Interesting story, I remember when it happened. First I'd heard of a "Graveyard Orbit," I don't think I like the sound of that. There's a level of orbit with hundreds of nuclear cores?
Thanks! That is an interesting story. I saw a nuclear rocket engine in a museum once.
What ended NERVA was the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Another early idea was the US Project Orion, which would launch a substantial spacecraft - about 1000 tonnes - from the earth using a series of small nuclear explosions to propel it. The project was commenced in 1958 by General Atomics and was aborted in 1963 when the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty made it illegal, but radioactive fallout could have been a major problem. The Orion idea is still alive, as other means of generating the propulsive pulses are considered.
Orion sounds like the kind of idea Teller would have come up with....
It came from Stanisław Ulam who co-developed the hydrogen bomb. It would be a project that Teller would of been aware .