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Neat! Now if only I understood math...
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
You found the catch.
LOL
I kind of wish that they also had some material on some of the other propulsion systems which are in various stages of the drawing board.
One of my favorites is the uranium hexaflouride fuel reactor. Basically, you run with gaseous uranium that is controlled mainly by adjusting the gas pressure in the reactor. Then you have a series of heat exchange plumbing in the reactor vessel itself that you pump the reaction mass through. Some work was done on the idea back in the late 60's early 70's.
If memory serves, sustained acceleration is possible. At 0.1g, you can be anywhere in the inner solar system in a couple of months. At 1.0g, you can make it to Pluto in the same time frame.
=
An artist's conception of the NASA
reference design for the Project Orion
spacecraft powered by nuclear
propulsion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
You'd throw out small atomic bombs one at a time and detonate them at a distance calculated to give your vessel a huge push through space. Your vessel would have big shock absorbers facing the explosions to assure any passengers would survive the sudden G forces that follow.
I know some folks that are still very interested in this and even want to launch from the earth's surface, which is do-able and you could launch some very, very large and heavy structures, but the nuclear fall-out would be, obviously, unpopular. So a few want to do this secretly, but where can they get the money? (Not to mention the bombs).
(By the way, I'm not suggesting that this actually be done.)
Uranium is heavy stuff, but can be extracted from an asteroid.