Seems like a security nightmare to me. First failed launch could easily kill the project. Not mentioning what could happen if Musk adopts this tech and starts launching hundreds of rockets with it.
@jgg @soller It's not clear from the linked article, but the DARPA site seems to confirm this is only for space to space travel, not Earth to space launch, so that would seem to take SOME of the risk out of it. Though I don't know how bad it would be to fail catastrophically while using conventional boosters on the way up and spreading all that material around, I would imagine it's less bad than any of the literal nuclear weapons that have been tested over the years.
Good to know.
I agree, the main risk would be spreading radiactive material in a potentially big area. It would be like a dirty bomb. After that kind of failure, it would be pretty hard finding a place for launching the next one.
