A Guide to Colonization of the Solar System: Part III

The bigger the boom, the faster you can go.

That was the Tsar Bomba from 161 km away. It was a measly 50 megatons. (source)

Links to earlier parts of this series: Part I and Part II.

The Tsar Bomba was big. I mean, really big. Its fireball alone was five miles in diameter. The cap of the mushroom cloud was up to fifty-nine miles wide and soared up to forty-two miles above the Earth, above the stratosphere into the mesosphere.

We’re gonna need a much bigger boom than that if we’re going to cruise the Solar System in style.

There is something that makes a much bigger boom, but it’s rather nerve-wracking to work with, and accumulating enough of it makes the Manhattan Project look like a couple of toddlers with crayons: antimatter. To give an idea of how powerful antimatter is, to make a boom equal to the Tsar Bomba, take one kilogram each of matter and antimatter, pour them into the Cuisinart, and press “puree”. You won’t know how it turns out, but if you’re in Boston, everybody in New York City sure will.

Weak. Needs to be upgraded to Mr. Antimatter. (source)

So…yeah. Good stuff. Tell Dr. Emmett Brown his DeLorean is going the way of the dodo if he doesn’t get with the program and install what all the cool kids have…