Nuclear cannon to the planets

Here we go on an imaginative cruise into insanity here, but that's okay.  The world is already crazy, so a bit more craziness won't matter much.  An adaptation of a proposition made by Brian Wang of Nextbigfuture and posted here awhile back for your amusement, consternation, or whatever the case may be.

Actually, it is a mash of a number of ideas gleaned from various sources.  The title, for instance, is an adaptation of the Quicklaunch concept.  Quicklaunch was itself an adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, From the Earth to the Moon.  Verne described in detail the plan to set off an explosion that would send a spaceship to the moon.  The nineteenth century novel was technically correct up to a point.  The explosive materials wouldn't have been powerful enough and nobody inside the craft would have survived the g forces.  Besides that, there was no way to soft land the thing once it got there, anyway.

Wang's idea is to set off a nuclear explosion in order to send up to 200k tons of cargo only to the moon or elsewhere.  He doesn't describe how to soft land the thing either.  That and a few other thoughts, led to me try to improve upon the concept a bit.  In the link above, I suggested using nukes to soft land.  But that may run into opposition.  Okay, can you land it another way?  Sure, why not?  As long as we go small ball.  Trying to stop 200k tons would require powerful rockets and a lot of fuel.  A smaller payload and careful planning would reduce that substantially.

To get from lunar escape velocity to a soft landing would require more than half of the launch mass to be fuel.  Not so good, but that's the price to pay for a soft landing on the moon.  Let's say you were to launch 1000 tons with a nuclear blast.  Then, you may get upwards of 500 tons to land softly on the moon.  Not an insignificant achievement.

What could you do with 500 tons?  Well, a 100 megawatt LFTR would weigh in at about 50 tons or less.  A railroad locomotive weighs about 200 tons.  You could substitute several "earth" movers and diggers for the weight of one locomotive.  Various equipment and supplies to support a crew could fill out the rest.  With all this equipment, you can construct a moon base with in situ materials.

The purpose of the moon base would be to begin development of the moon by using the moon's resources.  Thus, the equipment mentioned above would be tailored towards that purpose.  The equipment would have to survive the launch, too.

As Wang mentioned, none of the technology for the launch itself is new.  Nor are the concepts.  Radioactivity can be contained, as it has been in underground nuclear tests in the past.  It wouldn't violate any treaties, and it could be done quickly and cheaply.

A thousand ton device isn't as massive as a Saturn V rocket, nor a Space Shuttle on a launch pad.  It could cause quite a boom when it hits the atmosphere at escape velocity or higher.  But there are plenty of remote sites where this wouldn't be a problem.  The boom would be a lot less than it would be if the boom occurred above the ground, don't you know.

The hard part may be the landing.  The rockets would have to solid, I would think.  That's because liquids have to be contained in a tank, which may not hold up in such a launch.  Besides that, solid rockets have to burn up completely because they can't be stopped.  In answer to those problems, here's a proposition.  Carry more than enough rockets and use only what you need.  That will cut into payload though.  But payload won't be a problem because you can just send more with a bigger blast.  Careful planning can reduce any overage to a minimum.

Assuming all goes well, you can begin building the moon base.  Perhaps you wouldn't need to land a crew.  Using teleoperation, just operate everything from the Earth.  Once everything is set for the crew, then people could land and begin using the facilities.

In the long run, you could build space stations that could be placed at EML4 or EML5.  These could be used as way stations to Mars.  That facilities would be used for the transport of people, and the transport of goods for interplanetary trade.  Now to set up the Mars base, you would just lather, rinse, and repeat.

Once completed, a chain like series of stops would be in place for the long transit to Mars.  Starting from Earth, you reach orbit.  From orbit, you would proceed to the moon.  From the moon, you could proceed to EML4 and finally from there, to Mars.  People could collect on the station and go to Mars in large groups every two years.  In a decade, several hundreds to thousands could be on Mars.