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Project Orion was the first engineering design study of a spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion, an idea first proposed by Stanisław Ulam in 1947. The project, initiated in 1958, envisioned the explosion of atomic bombs behind the craft and was led by Ted Taylor at General Atomics and physicist Freeman Dyson, who at Taylor's request took a year away from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study to work on the project. The first such think-tank of its kind since the Manhattan Project, Project Orion is recalled by many of its team as representing the best years of their lives.

By using energetic nuclear power, Orion offered both high thrust and high specific impulse — the holy grail of spacecraft propulsion. It offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines now under study. Cheap interplanetary travel was the goal of the Orion Project. Its supporters felt that it had great potential for space travel, but it lost political approval because of concerns with fallout from its propulsion. This concern could be partially addressed by building it in orbit.[1] The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is generally acknowledged to have ended the project.

Quote (Veilside @ Mon, Mar 2 2009, 05:36am)

Launching stuff into space currently costs millions of dollars, but a cheaper alternative has existed for decades. For those of you unfamiliar with Project Orion, it's basically spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion.



So, what do you think, is such an important project worth cancelling because of possible fallout (bearing in mind fallout depends on where the launch is located)? Are governments being stupid in not using this technology?

Here's a video of a test flight in 1959.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQCrPNEsQaY

Quote (Kamikizzle @ Wed, Mar 4 2009, 09:17am)

yea when that craft is 300 miles into our atmosphere, you could launch in the middle of the mojave and still feel fallout from california to colorado. not to mention we dont exactly have launch pads in the middle of no where...

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To calculate the damage of fallout, there is a very important number that must first be obtained. This number is the number of rads a person can absorb at very low dosages before dying. It was suspected to be about 100,000 initially, but now is known to be about 10,000. Using this number, approximately 10000 people have died from radiation poisoning resulting from nuclear tests that did not live near ground zero, as George Dyson states in his book.

Now, how does this relate to Orion? It has been estimated that the total fallout of one launch of Orion would be about 1% of the radiation that had been launched into the atmosphere. This can be reduced by a factor of 10 if launched at the Magnetic North Pole. So, totaling everything up, about 10 people would die every time an Orion was launched.

Now, I don’t want you to go thinking that 10 perfectly healthy people would instantaneously die when an Orion was launched. In all actuality, there would be thousands, if not millions, of people whose lives would be shortened slightly, totaling the lives of 10 people. In other words, if one million were affected, it would shorten their lives by about 3 hours. And it is likely that more than just one million people would be affected, lowering the number more.

Quote (Veilside @ Wed, Mar 4 2009, 01:31am)

From Next Big Future.

Quote (andyd104 @ Wed, Mar 4 2009, 06:47pm)

Well, seeing how this concept has never has a valid test using the designed propulsion unit, i see it unlikely they would continue with this design in a declining nuclear powered world.

Quote (short_circut @ Wed, Mar 4 2009, 11:28pm)

i am a heron. i haev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans