Basically, an orion drive whose pulse units are crushed to critical mass by magnetic fields rather than by chemical explosives, allowing for much smaller pulse units and a more compact design overall, this does sadly come at the cost of some Isp, but this engine still gets specific impulses of around 10000s, at good thrust, allowing for the use of much higher energy trajectories
#Mini-Mag Orion
flint yoke
ornate rivet
Isn't this just middle-tech between Orion Drives and Inertial Confinement Fusion Drives?
flint yoke
its moreso a different, more compact orion
that's also a lot better if you don't want every ship to be carrying a nuclear arsenal
ornate rivet
Several thousand critical masses of fissile material IS a nuclear arsenal. Requiring magnets to activate just means you can't use the pellets directly as weapons, but throwing some explosives on those pellets is simple. I'm not convinced this technology is adequate for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
I'm not sure it matters either; even if you could make a high-impulse drive without weapons-grade propellant, the ship you strap this drive on is now an unstoppable weapon of mass destruction. I would require some timing, but you've just replaced nuclear missiles with kinetic impactors, except kinetic impactors are immune to being shot down.
If your concern is fuel volatility, explosive-activated pellets are just as durable as crushable pellets, if not more so.
The only advantage I can see would be fuel density. Not carrying the explosives around would free up deltaV for other things, assuming the magnetic crusher and the means to power it end up being lighter.
Considering all of this, I don't see the niche this is supposed to occupy in KSP. There's no military concerns here (excluding mods), and the precursor tech is basically identical. There's still a minimum pellet size and therefore a minimum blast plate size, and superior tech with much better scalability is right around the corner. It's a neat engine, but things like nuclear turbojets, miniaturised metallic hydrogen engines, or fission fragment engines would be a better use of design space IMO.
flint yoke
Metallic hydrogen is worse and not worth the time, at least Mini-Mag Orion is something we COULD build IRL
flint yoke
another thing, original orion is banned by international treaty, (carries WMDs), mini-mag orion isnt banned and is a good option
hollow plank
its moreso a different, more compact orion
I do think it would be a good step between Orion drives and inertial confinement fusion drives. Perhaps under a tech called
"Rapid detonation containment" or something