Update on Nuclear powered and reactionless rockets 1998 and Alpha-electric and Nuclear-electric rockets 1999 by Warren D. Smith it appears the former reprot was "scooped". R.Kelsey unearthed this paper: Robert L. Forward Radioisotope sails for deep space propulsion and power, J.British Interplanetary Society 49 (1996) 147-149. Forward essentially invented the same idea I had for the "alpha rocket". He also invented the same idea I had that it could provide electric power as well as propulsion, and also was aware of the idea that many atoms emit more than one alpha particle (multi decay chains)... Forward also found a number of previous papers (in rather obscure places) about this same idea. The idea in some form apparently is 50 years old and gets forgotten and rediscovered. Forward has two ideas I did not have: 1. the idea of "dumping dead nuclei". His plan is to make the decay product be a radon isotope (a gas) which hopefully will leave the fuel film, ridding us of excess mass. In contrast, I wanted to try to keep all such atoms so I could take advantage of their additional decays. I think my plan here is better, actually. 2. Forward worried about heat emitted by the radioactive fuel. Although this heat seems ignorable for most applications when the film is unfurled, if the film is initially packed into a compact container it could be a major problem; serious cooling would be required. On the other hand: Forward did not analyse radiation damage and sputtering, and ways to ameliorate them (all this seems to be the key issue) at all. Nor did he realize that coulombic effects should keep the film flat automatically. Nor did he recognize the ability to do "multistaging," a big performance enhancer. Nor did he have my closed form solution for the thrust... Finally, my second generation idea - which I called the "alpha electric rocket" - still appears to be totally new. This should provide significantly higher performance than the plain alpha rocket, if it works - but the likelihood of it working is less than the (high) likelihood of the alpha rocket working.