Boeing is trying to make Aerospace Fighters ... or something ...

[Bren]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmEQRZ7v5PI

[grimlock1]

I cringed when the host talked about how he would like to fly in an aircraft with such a non-polluting engine... 

The detail is pretty thin but if I had to make a guess, this would be relatively long burn, low impulse drive.   Similar to an ion drive, although this may produce a bit more thrust. Whether the power to weight ratio will eat your lunch has yet to be seen.

[Matti]

Nuclear explosions providing thrust is NOT new invention. Perhaps real life equivalents of Drop Shuttle and Mule will operate on that principle.

[Red Pins]

*

Further proof the Internet is rotting the brains of otherwise intelligent morons and making them suitable consumers for Facebook and FarmVille-like app on their smarter-phones.

[ANS Kamas P81]

I cringed when the host talked about how he would like to fly in an aircraft with such a non-polluting engine... 

Wonder what the carbon footprint of an fission-pulse external combustion engine is.

[snewsom2997]

Wonder what the carbon footprint of an fission-pulse external combustion engine is.

See Project Pluto, Project Orion, Project Daedalus.

Nuclear Test ban Treaties more or less prohibit any of this.

The book Footfall (Niven/Pernoulle), actually has the US build a Project Orion craft built to fight alien invaders, trying to colonize the planet.

[Lazarus Jaguar]

Wasnt an orion ship fully designed back in the 60s?  Just update that if they want a nuclear pulsejet

[snewsom2997]

No not fully designed, the furthest they got was testing the pusher plate, which the explosion would bounce off of providing thrust. They toyed around with a soda machine type device to spit out bombs at regular intervals. No prototypes were built, nothing but some drawings, really.

Though an Orion Craft could be the bigger than a Supercarrier, and in theory a one stop colony for the moon or an asteroid.

[IAMCLANWOLF]

Further proof the Internet is rotting the brains of otherwise intelligent morons and making them suitable consumers for Facebook and FarmVille-like app on their smarter-phones.

Yep... this pretty much sums it up.

[Sabelkatten]

Wasnt an orion ship fully designed back in the 60s?  Just update that if they want a nuclear pulsejet

If this is even true... But it wouldn't have all that much in common with old boom-boom. This looks more like clean fusion variant of Pluto - use the fusion reaction to heat air (meaning you can build the engine to much more manageable specs than Orion which uses the plasma directly).

[snewsom2997]

Orion was nuclear pulse detonation propulsion, think of it like a nuclear powered Argus Pulse Jet (V1 Propulsion). Just with a much lower frequency of pulses.

While Project Pluto replaced the fuel in a Ramjet with a nuclear heating element, however even today we would run into materials science problems, materials lightweight, capable of handling extreme heat and radiation. Lead don't fly well, and it doesn't handle heat well, Concrete wouldn't be useful either. I don't know if the materials to handle this even exist, most reactors are submerged in liquid to keep them cool. Pluto was only tested in a static installation, and I suspect with a monster cooling system to prevent the thing from melting on the test bed.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Wasnt an orion ship fully designed back in the 60s?  Just update that if they want a nuclear pulsejet

Some prelim design work was done, including estimates of multi-thousand ton ships; the nice thing with going big is that it made a much smoother ride, and the energy and specific impulse budgets were absolutely enormous.

As to why you'd never want to even consider launching one from earth, well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQCrPNEsQaY
Here's a conventional explosives-powered test model launched back in 1959 for a short trip through the air.  Proved a functional proof of concept for the engine.  Then everyone realized "we're going to set off a nuke every couple seconds" and how horribly bad an idea that was anywhere near a planet (the aurorae thank you for your donations) let alone in an atmosphere.

[Wrangler]

Are they out of there minds? There a lot of holes in this old idea made new...

[glitterboy2098]

This patent is inertial confinement fusion rocket, just with a clever enhanced RTG power source.

It is less project orion, and more project Daedalus.

Also, I'm certain the patent was meant to cover the idea of the enhanced RTG component of the concept, not the inertial confinement fusion drive itself, which was first dreamed up back in the 70's.