Science: The Nuclear Rockets

When spaceships start using nuclear power, they will have to take off from deserts with no unsheltered humans for miles around. Only the crewmen in their cabins will be fully shielded. As the ship departs for space it will blast a considerable area with gamma rays, neutrons and radioactive exhaust, and a new, unpoisoned site may have to be found for the next takeoff. But designers of nuclear rockets do not worry much about this sort of thing. In Nucleonics, a group of experts tell about current projects to soar into space by atom...

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