Tyrannosaurs Flying F-14s!

The cover of this issue of Galaxy features an unusual space launch concept, but an article inside had more realistic and interesting insights.

From The Space Review:

The comic strip Calvin & Hobbes once ran a classic on a Sunday in 1995. Calvin and his tiger buddy are playing with toy dinosaurs and F-14 Tomcat fighter planes when Calvin concludes that the only thing cooler than tyrannosaurs and F-14s… is tyrannosaurs flying F-14s.

This is a scene that has been repeated throughout the history of human spaceflight, when somebody has come up with some concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever, that they decide can be made infinitely cooler by combining it with another concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever. Want to explore the icy moons of Jupiter? Let’s combine the most powerful ion engines ever built and the largest space nuclear reactor ever built and the largest rocket ever built. That would be cool. (It will also cost twenty-three billion dollars and never be built.)

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