If enough material, mostly in the form of hydrogen gas, accumulates on the surface of the white dwarf, nuclear fusion reactions can occur and intensify, culminating into a cosmic -
sized hydrogen bomb blast.
The United States followed in January 1958 with the 31 - pound satellite Explorer I. Even as the nascent U.S. space program focused on pint -
size payloads, however, a research team at an obscure division of the General Dynamics Corporation was secretly drawing up plans for a monstrous 4,000 - ton spaceship that would be powered by the sequential explosions of thousands of
hydrogen bombs and would ferry hundreds of astronauts at a time across the solar system.