Project Orion

[soylentgreenb]

@RustyNex Actually, I'm wrong about the gun type design being retired that early. A few more were built for special purposes(bunker busting and nuclear artillery shells). Gun type weapons are inherently unsafe; you either have to insert the uranium bullet or uranium target just prior to use or have some form of mechanical obstacle or neutron poison(e.g. cadmium boride) that is removed when arming the device.

[hansballaballa]

how many single explosions u wanna produce per mile, to not let the G-Force make mud of everything inside the Vessel?

[RustyNex]

nothing says progress like blowing this shit out of something

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

Nothing is blown up with this form of space flight. Are you dumb or something? The Orion craft would remain entirely intact and nothing else is effected. So ummm... what the hell are you talking about?

[RustyNex]

@anonymous3227 erm except for maybe the bombs that come out the back maybe? i am sure the ship would be built to withstand the explosions, it would be a pretty shitty mode of transport if it couldn't.

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

Oh, so you consider small half-foot or less "bombs" as things which get destroyed? That's the entire point of a space craft designed to travel as far as Alpha Centauri in 44 years with nothing but nuclear devices as propellant. I figured you were speaking of ANYTHING other that the actual propellant devices as being "blown up". Nuclear devices that small have the same affect as the sun in a 365 day period on ANY point of the earth. There are numerous other things which put out

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

much more radiation every day, such as the SUN! Are you really trying to compare a brilliant scientific idea's radiation output to what the sun puts out each, and every, day on the earth? The Orion project would have produced the same amount of radiation to entire orbit in 30 minutes that the sun puts out on the entire world in about 30 seconds. So, yet again, I must question your education and ability to research things. For the love of God, or whatever you praise, RESEARCH it!!!!!!

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

For further emphasize, RESEARCH the amount of radiation the Sun puts on the world compared to how much radiation these extremely, extremely, extremely, small nuclear reactions would create (even with hundreds of them used to achieve orbit). The fact is that in TODAYS time we would use modern propulsion systems to get the Orion craft into orbit before ever using the nuclear devices (because of people like you who throw a fit about an amount of radiation that would never affect you).

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

There is even a simulation video in THIS website, youtube, of a craft which reaches orbit with modern propulsion systems before it initiates it's nuclear propulsion systems. This is much more likely in today's time period as everyone, me included, would agree. You are an idiot for no researched this project and it's modern day applications. Once in space it doesn't matter if they use nuclear propulsion b/c in space radiation affects NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

One last comment in case you want to argue again. NOOOO!!! Radiation really does not affect us on earth if it is released in space! It all burns up in our atmosphere. And the radiation which doesn't burn up in our atmosphere doesn't matter because, guess what, we don't live in space. The only things which affect us in space are solid objects (which have mass, which is NOT radiation) that can strike our space ships. Radiation burns up in Earth's, and other planet's, atmospheres.

[RustyNex]

@anonymous3227 i would like to inform you of how dumb as fuck you are, first of all you are trying to make a point on youtube, why? do you really think i give a fuck what you have to say? i never once mentioned anything about radiation and the sun, you seem to be arguing with voices in your head. you should seek help! also nuclear radiation is different to solar radiation, and the idea of propelling things using explosions is as outdated as the internal combustion engine,

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

For fu**'s sake man, just do 1 hour of research before you reply again. A large majority (about 90%) of the Orion files have been de-classified and have been studied by today's most advanced experimental physicists. I would bet my LIFE that you don't have even 1/4 of the education that ANY of those experimental physicists have. Hell, I'm currently in college for Nuclear Engineering and I don't even have 1/4 of their education. So you probably only have 1/16 of their education.

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

And, NUTS! I gotta reply again b/c you are so dumb. You don't think they researched the effects of the nuclear explosions which would launch the craft into space!? THEY DID! And the hundreds of explosions necessary were less than 1/100,000,000 of Hiroshima each and only a few thousand were required and all were to be from a remote launch site. That's less radiation than any nuclear bomb test EVER tested. So really, F off you dumb kid. Study this before you make ignorant comments.

[RustyNex]

@anonymous3227 you do realise that a nuclear bomb has a minimum size? and a minimum output? because any smaller and it will not reach critical mass? Hiroshima is about as small as nuclear explosions go. also it doesn't matter if this ship can travel to a possible earth like planet in 44 years, humans cannot survive the forces involved, so what would be the point if people can't get to the planets? you have some serious issues, you need to find a new hobby other than defending the internet

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

If i am dumb, you are a 10th generation retard (no offense Mr retard). The idea of propelling things may be as old at an internal combustion engine; but that was with pistons morons, not with a thermo-nuclear reaction. Furthermore, humans CAN survive the G-forces involved; that was the entire point of the Orion project: to send humans far out. If you wish to disagree with the most brilliant scientists of the last 2 centuries be my guest, but all of their theories said this is possibl

[anonymous3227]

@anonymous3227

And NO, the smallest nuclear detonation is not of the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima moron. The bombs designed for this project were much smaller and were designed to be detonated about every 1 second to propel the craft into Earth-Orbit (but like I said; in today's world the Orion craft would be propelled into orbit by modern rockets before the nuclear-propulsion took over. And yes, humans can survive the forces involved, it all part of the 10-year study.

[RustyNex]

@anonymous3227 to be honest, it was funny in the beginning how worked up you got about this, as if some how this was your idea and you had to defend it, but now its just sad, you are trying so hard to prove a point on the internet, which is why you are still the biggest dumb ass, if you put this effort into doing something useful with your life, you might actually get laid!

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

Rusty, you sound like typical first class trash. You can't even provide ONE fact why I am wrong. You can't use proper grammer. You can't use proper punctuation. You can't provide any scientific facts why I am wrong. Just get lost man. If you had at least given me a proper scientific argument then I would have taken you seriously, but instead you just criticized me with no explanation. Guess what, this is a scientific video, and you have no scientific background. Get lost kid.

[anonymous3227]

@RustyNex

Oh ya, and by the simple comment that I won't get laid simply because I am defending a scientific standpoint you disprove any credibility you had in your entire life. Most of histories greatest scientists weren't pimps or playboys; in fact many of them were complete losers with very little female interaction. This proves yet again that you are ignorant of everything involving science and the history of science. Get lost kid.

[RustyNex]

@anonymous3227 haha this is so much fun, you are so easy to anger, even when i spell it out to you, you still come back like you can make a difference! you are trying so hard to make a point its so amazingly lame. you keep telling me all about how stupid i am, tell me how much of a rocket scientist you are, and how this idea is the best thing since sliced bread, and i will continue to tell you how much of a twat you are

[alanarnold26]

@anonymous3227 You seem like a complete bell end.

[soylentgreenb]

@RustyNex There is a minimum requirement for fissile inventory given the limits of conventional explosives, neutron reflectors and so on(about ~3 pounds of weaponsgrade plutonium) but there is no minimum yield. If the core is just barely supercritical for a brief moment the yield can be negligible.

W54 was the lightest fission bomb ever made, weighing 51 pounds. It had a selectable yield of 10 tonnes(!) to 1 kT.

Failed 1-point safety tests have had yields below 1 tonne fission yield.

[RustyNex]

@soylentgreenb how is the yield controlled? how can you control the duration of the super critical stage?

[soylentgreenb]

@RustyNex That's easy. You play with the timing of the initiators for the high explosive lenses to get a less perfect or more perfect implosion. If you get the timing really off the pit goes egg-shaped(solid pit, linear implosion. Used only in very small, inefficient weapons) or peanut shaped(hollow pit, flying plate/"air lens" initiated at two points) at its most compressed and never becomes critical at all.

Delay the signal to one initiator by a tunable amount and you can dial in the yield.

[RustyNex]

@soylentgreenb ah thats interesting, but didn't the first nuclear bomb have one single initiator? like a uranium tipped bullet or something?

[soylentgreenb]

@RustyNex Depends on how you define first. They were so sure that the uranium 'gun' type device would work that they did not need to test it before dropping it on Hiroshima. That device did not have 1-point safety and only one was ever built.

Plutonium has too many background neutrons; you must use implosion, which is much faster. The first nuclear bomb ever tested compressed a plutonium sphere using 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal explosive lenses(32 initiation points) arranged like a football.

[RustyNex]

@soylentgreenb ah ok i see, it would have to be pretty perfect though

[soylentgreenb]

@RustyNex The precision required for a high, reliable yield was on the order of 1 mm in the casting of the high explosive lenses and the precision required for the initiators on the order of a tenth of a microsecond.

They had to use many lenses because slow HE is still very fast. If you replace the slow explosives with a metal plate that deforms into a hemispherical shell as it is launched across an air gap(an "air lens") you only need 2 initiation points(can't have 1 point safety with less).

[RustyNex]

@soylentgreenb crazy, its quite impressive engineering even if it does nothing other than destroy everything

[hansballaballa]

lol! its the worse idea i'fe ever seen. what they wana transport? pudding?

[anonymous3227]

@hansballaballa

You, sir, are ignorant and you clearly haven't done even one minute of research on the Orion Project. It was completely safe for those aboard the craft as well as for anyone remaining on Earth.

[bigpoppa1234]

I used to do this with Humvee's in Battlefield 2.

[darkling9109]

Seems like a badass way to travel.  Plus if you happened upon some unfriendly ETs you have a fuckton of nukes handy to give him a human-like welcome.

[SolRosenberg84]

I love the idea of nuking ourselves around outer space.

Its such a human way to travel.

[sandcat20000]

@SolRosenberg84 its such an ANYONE way to travel, nukes store a lot of energy, and plus, there are no side effects, there's no radiation leftover after the initial blast because there is nothing to hold it! also the ammount of material you can transport is practically endless, you could, for example move a starship the size of the moon if you had large enough bombs, you could move a starship the size of a star cluster if you had supernova size nukes (at that scale you'd use antimatter)

[etbadaboum]

Nuclear powering dream... Technology isn't bad or good, it is just what humans do with it.

[mellikof]

what if you could make non radio active nukes with H3 from the moon. H3 is a non radio active isotope. would that work as a substitute?

[aluisious]

To be fair setting off bombs to launch from the atmosphere is incredibly dirty. You might call it 1% of existing fallout, but that's not a flattering figure. You can't build a science program based on planned, indefinite pollution of the environment with fission products.

Now if they can figure out how to do this with one step to fusion, ie by igniting fuel with lasers, that would be something wholly different.

[CamJamWil]

Too bad there is Anti Gravity Propulsion.

[DavidEC1984]

If you're a fan of human space exploration, the most important investment humanity will ever make, it's hard not to watch those little things go up, up, up without a piercing sense of what could have been - where we could be - where we could be going. Oh well, Project Orion, your time will come.

[rjpugh]

Check "Project Orion: A Re-imagining"; it's here in youtube. That idea has the Orion being boosted into space via SRB's, like the space shuttle's. Once in outer space, the ship could be positioned to spew it's fallout in such a way that it doesn't effect Earth (or has minimal effect).

[TheAwesomeFormat]

God Dammit, I thought of this idea while I was at school today while trying to think of a means of rapid acceleration in space without having to waste chemicals. And I thought I was so genius, but my teacher told me to look this up. Fuck you NASA!

[cuentosdepapel]

Thanks for all the knowledge Sir Arthur C. Clarke. I miss you every single day. I'm resigned that I'll never see a space flight and that saddens me the most. Thanks again for the education, the passion, the heart and soul and for the scientific fiction.

[realmomentsdotcom]

one thing i want to ask: when this thing launches,will it make alot of nucular fall out? like when these things go off, won't that not only damage the atmosphere of earth,but make a large fallout? please answer me on this,bye.

[DavidEC1984]

If it's done somewhere remote and with reasonably clean bombs, then, no. The couple of megatons of nuclear fallout would increase the world's total (from nuclear testing and accidents like Chernobyl) by a few percent at most. Human beings detonated a lot of weapons far more powerful than these ones throughout the twentieth century and the atmosphere is still here.

[spartonne]

Just finished the book by George Dyson. Amazing.....absolutely amazing. On one hand depressing that it didn't happen but ultimately the book left me feeling excited and pumped up that we can do this!

[NoLongerFooled]

Blah, blah, blah.

None of this will ever happen in a million year. Google "The New World Order Conspiracy" and educate yourself who and what is really running our planet.

There's no way in hell the Controllers are going to want man to become a bi-planetary species - controlling him on one is enough of a chore as it is.

[serpentphoenix]

And Man said:

Let us build nuclear bomb propelled star ships to move as fast as 1/10th the speed of c, to venture forth towards the gliese star system , so that we may colonize and multiply in this star system, and ensure the survival of our kind.

im talking about building Project ORION.

[darthvader5300]

FAE or thermobaric weapons can give us cheap space travel, at least for non-passenger cargo like water. It takes about 5 to 16 feet thick layer of water to indefinitely and perfectly shield our astronauts and cosmonauts from cosmic rays forever. Project ORION must be revived at once. Earth is the cradle of humanity but no one can live in the cradle forever. Once a completely independent industrial base is placed in space, it will replicate itself, opening the colonization of the solar system.

[Kerberoz01]

@darthvader5300 thermobaric weapons only work in the lower atmosphere

[darthvader5300]

You Americans and We Russians have both FAE or Fuel Air Explosive weapons technologies that can give near nuclear explosions minus the effects of nuclear weapons. Alloys of beryllium-copper bronze are practically unbreakable and nickel-zirconium steels are practically bullet-proof and bomb-proof. Bethlehem Steel in the early decades, drilled holes in nickel steel ingots, placed dynamites inside them, plugged them, and detonated them and all they got is a good explosion and an undamaged ingot!

[Cabuncle]

hm... what area shall we contaminate...no..how much air would be contaminated.

when tchernobyl collapsed the air polution was like wtf!! children had to take medicine when they were born in the 86's... and the rain will wash the s**t in the ground so we would end up eating the stuff...

i like the idea, i had it as child(thanks hollywood and the flying person who stood 0.5 meters to an explosion *gg*) but even used in space, the gravitation would attract the bad stuff sooner or later :(

[homerilias]

It iws very dangerous for a specie to only populate one planet.

I'd be on a journey like this right away, eventhough I know I risk my life. We should do it soon.

[TheScientist0000000]

It's kind of like an internal combustion engine's piston, except the entire craft is the piston. I am really skeptical about manned missions to other planets. According to all the laws of physics we know from Newton, exactly half of the trip would have to be spent decelerating. The craft has to be slower then the escape velocity of whatever mass its intending on landing on. All of this has to be done within the g-force constraints of the human body.

[benth1]

Now I know where these donuts-on-a-rope contrails come from ! =)

[jag9998]

I'm a laser-pushed light sail kinda guy myself. Why carry your fuel at all?

[WaiWu]

Using Nuclear Weapons to fuel a spaceship? Why are we not funding this?! Po litic Suck!

[captinseperoth]

bbc is pro-environment

like how

nbc-democrat/liberals

fox-republicans/conservative

npr/ NRA

..so

[EdouardDubois]

Beautiful...

[georgel19841]

Why don't we put a atomic bomb ,in the head of Arthur Clarke

[Naturality]

@georgel19841 Because placing an explosive device in a corpse would achieve nothing.

[georgel19841]

@Naturality Would achieve the placement of that corpse on...Mars funny one

[rontayan]

Quck! Someone Call Obama We've got to get this moving!

[treva31]

The G forces can easily be as low as 2G with a good shock absorbing system,

Freeman Dyson discussed a H-Bomb design that could launch 8million tons with almost zero radioactive contamination.

[Chronobeanz]

even if the G force is too much the rocket could be computer controlled and simply used to transport large amounts of supplies to astronauts put into space by conventional means.

[barthoedemaker]

1950-1995 = crazy times!

[popeyeus]

may have to turn the engine off during sleep time. A vaccum would make a great muffler for sound though. What kind of motion sickness would this cause jerking around in space?

[EdouardDubois]

@popeyeus

The pusher plate was designed so that (ideally) the sudden brute acceleration of the bombs would be delivered more smoothly. It would have been a kind of giant shock-absorber, like we see in our cars. Only much more sophisticated I imagine.

[barthoedemaker]

They allready knew it in the 60's! The goverments did not wanting it yet, here we are today...

The world is not ready for it...

- Concorde

- Moon rocket

- X-15 / SR-71 Blackbird

- Project Orion

[gun844]

You are stupid and out dated like your country....haarp and the other things serve the usa goverrmant and they want us to keep humanity in prison.

[manjulaaw]

If orion use for manned explorations, people inside the spacecraft have to go through a very high accelerations. Can human tolerate such a huge accelaration? Even it is hard to keep in normal state in normal chemical rocket.

[PalmCityStudios]

No, if you read the book (I am) they found that VERY large Orion craft (oceanliner size and up) have less G force on the occupants than the Shuttle.

[Azilythe]

High G training can train a human to sustain under a constant of 9 G's, but the nuclear propulsion that Orion uses only gives short bursts, and those have a completely different survivability (up to 100g).

[underbelly69]

once they fine-tune the detonation sequences - yes... they could use much harsher accelerations for non-piloted missions carrying tons of supplies

[privateworldofwarft]

How does this do with rockets you shit head?!

[RecalcitrantBiznis]

To call him 'Black' is an insult to his mother. She is 'White', his father is Black, thus he is mixed race. But whatever, he is still a prick. Lol. And that peace prize. What a joke. The whole Nobel thing is a joke. They're prizes for the best illuminati party line towers. Nobel invented dynamite for fucksake. What's that say about a peace prize?

[HaydenPK]

i have suceeded in trolling this video. thank you all.

[aoeaoae]

"can we finally stop wasting time on killing people" what if they try to kill you? is it still a waste of time for you to fight them (possibly killing them in the process)?

see, had you say "can we ALL finally stop wasting time on killing each other" I would heartily agree with THAT.

Still, event then, "we" is deceptive. There are several cultures present on Earth right now, some VERY ALIEN to the Western culture of Freedom of the Thought/Equal individual innate worth/Social contract.

[jigglesnap]

ummmmmmmm..... fallout?

[samcostanza]

The only issue I can see is, once you have that monster in space...HOW do you land it? That's a whole lotta mass to get back down!

[aoeaoae]

u land it same way it goes up.

but ultimately space elevators will be the main means of getting things up and down to the Planet; Orions would stay TOPSIDE.

[Elukka]

What do you land? People, maybe experiments, generally small things. There's no point in ever landing the whole thousand ton Orion. Instead you can have a small capsule on it that lands by parachute.

[TheDireAvenger]

The fallout concerns are rediculous anyway; you could send up cheap orbital solar power generators to replace coal power plants, which releases radioactive compounds during their operation!

Within a few years the radioactive emissions you save from replacing your coal burning powerplants more than make up for the fallout of your Orion launch.

(see the somewhat oddly titled but otherwise very good "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste" article in Scientific American for more details)

[builder20]

Why use Orion when you can dump billions into the development of a Space elevator. No nuclear fallout, and it's a cheap way to move heavy items into low earth orbit. It's a much easier sell to the international community!

[TheDireAvenger]

yeah! why, it's a brilliant idea for a species who can't put much mass into space, very cheap energy wise to use, all you need to do is get 2000 odd tonnes of material into space to build it and...

OH NO WAIT, THAT'S THE WHOLE PROBLEM XD

lol, on a serious note, the space elevator isn't quite what we want; it's for bringing up lots of little loads at low cost (ie passengers) we want a few very massive loads at low cost (ie the places for the passengers to go!). I say we need Sea Dragon (Wiki fmd)

[Lihinel]

Actually, the main problem (if one plans to use carbon nanotube based material for the cable) is producing the materials in large enough quantities and protecting the initial cable from minimeteorites and ionized oxigen.

You could get the initial cable up using existing technology and reinforce the cable using a scaled down climber system.

Though I dunno how outdated my info is... last thing I read was from Edwards with the latest reference papers cited beeing from back in 2000.

[TheDireAvenger]

Ah yes, you have to keep replacing the length of it as you use it to make up for micrometeorites and oxygen free radicals as you said, even when it's done!

Yeah, you could launch up a seed cable and dragging up, layer by layer, the full cable, but I don't think that's practical because of the problems you raised; thinner cables would be much more susceptable to ozone and micrometeorites. I reckon you'd be forced into bringing up more or less the whole thing, which will weigh thousands of tonnes.

[aoeaoae]

"Why use Orion" We need Orions to go between planets/stars, space elevators to serve the planet/orbit loop.

[Oxirk]

Why is there not a good place on earth while there atleast it some minds with money that have made a good place to live where there is proper things and people. I mean please- where is everyone?

[TheGodParticle]

not in our life time...

[shk9664]

God can we finally stop wasting time on killing people do something more productive?

[sandcrab132]

I say quit worrying about healthcare reform and global warming.

Thank you Obama for ruining the greatest country on Earth.

[ktototamto]

It is amazing how ppl like you would use every platform, discussion, oportunity - relevant or irrelevant - to throw piece of shit on Obama.

[RecalcitrantBiznis]

Ahh. Are you ok? Ah, poor little Obama, leave him alone. Give me a break! He's another puppet. Lol!

[jetpoweredgriffin]

@ktototamto

Seems to me that it was the same way with Bush.

what's the difference?

[youngromh4x0r]

Oh wow.

[loldozer]

Riding the nuclear fire of a peaceful WW3 into space? Where do I sign up?

And payloads up to EIGHT MILLION TONS of stuff at the cost of fallout of the Castle Bravo test? We got to do this!

8 million tons of stuff - basically with one rocket you can put the materials for a CITY SIZED COLONY on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

A CITY on the moon within our lifetime! Lets do this!

[builder20]

Or you could build a military orbital platform and rule the world! That sounds awesome too! Just think, you could assure WW3 never happens buy dropping kinetic energy weapons on whoever starts to get cheeky!

[mrhnm]

@loldozer Fear of nuclear power and weapons is going to keep this from happening though I agree with you I'm pretty sure this could get us to Alpha Centaruri in 40 years I read that somewhere I don't remember where so that could be inaccurate.

[cdoftx]

@loldozer Just use space elevators to get the payload up there, chemical rockets to get it away from Earth, and Orion for getting us to Mars.

[anonymous3227]

@cdoftx

Space elevators would be next to impossible to build. They would cost in the trillions of dollars and Mother Nature would likely destroy them in several years times with storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, high wind velocities at high altitude, hail, sun damage, birds hitting them, lighting, and anything else you can imagine which mother nature can produce (depending on where its built). Space elevators are about the least practical way EVER to get things into space.

[anonymous3227]

@cdoftx

Oh ya, and don't forget everything that Space can throw at a space elevator to destroy it. Our shuttles and space stations are capable of moving out of the way of detected micro-meteorites and any other space debris which can be foreseen. A space elevator can not be moved to avoid incoming objects from space.

Checkmate - the idea of space elevators suck under our current level of technology.

[anonymous3227]

@cdoftx

Christ, there's just so many things to criticize you about that I had to post another comment. Who cares about Mars?!?! The designers of the Orion theorized that they could make it to Alpha Centauri in just 44 years with the Orion Spacecraft. Why would we care about Mars when we could get an unmanned Orion Craft to Alpha Centauri (for a lot less) in just 44 years + 36 days to accelerate to 0.1C. Please research the project before making dumb comments. Thanks.

[cdoftx]

@anonymous3227 I agree with you on all of that. NASA needs to quit sending people into space and focus on new technologies. Carbon nanotubes and aerogel aren't big headline makers like going to the moon but they'll have a greater impact on Earth. Eventually, a team of self-replicating robots needs to be sent to asteroids, the moon, and mars to colonize them and mine them for fuel and materials. Once that happens, sending people to space won't take up 0.3% of all federal taxes collected.

[jushayward]

I think it was also a stepping stone to interstellar travel.

[blahdob]

Enjoy living on mars

and cancer

[roidroid]

why is Arthur Clarke dressed like Dr Evil?

[gukonni]

The scientists who worked on this project knew full well what it was capable of. They were so optimistic, they saw us having manned missions to jupiter and saturn by the 1970's. If we were're so politically and militarily compromised by nuclear technologies and weapons, this very well could have happened. We'd likely have bases on the moon and mars by now. In fact, there'd be little to stop us. Imagine fusion reactors using He3 on the moon.

[VivekRajcoomar]

does anyone kno the music from 0:52 - 1:18 ?

please?

[Dopplershift]

It's 'Sarabande' by Handel.

[boxa888]

3:00, also nikola teslas wireless energy tranfer, look up wardneclyffe tower. not really political but makes you wonder! his technology would have advanced mankind considerably as well, even without nuclear technology!!

[ArmageddonAfterparty]

Tyvm for posting this, very interesting.

[ShabbelleTiger]

This is kind of like how the demoman's pipe bomb jump is better than the soldier's rocket jump in TF2 right? =D

[micnato]

Not that the concept is that complicated to begin with, but thank you for putting it in even more understandable terms.

[helixdq]

There are normal reservations against launching from earth using nukes.

But there's no reasonable case against using nukes for launch from other planets or from orbit. It's incredibly more efficient then rockets.

But politically, if nukes have an important civilian use then the military is afraid of proliferation. So they'd rather keep us centuries back in terms of expansion, with orion engines we would already have large colonies on other planets, it's just that good.

[aoeaoae]

"the military is afraid of proliferation"

I would thought that CITIZENS are afraid of proliferation.

"using nukes for launch from orbit"

the whole point is that Orion is much better exactly for bringing stuff up INTO the LOW EARTH Orbit - much cheaper, much more efficient and so, much less eco-damaging per one kg payload lifted.

"would already have large colonies"

to do what? Open more HSBC branches?

[mkarnerfors]

And military aren't citizens?

[aoeaoae]

i meant civilians.

but even so, saying "military is afraid of proliferation" is narrowing it down too much. Surely all citizens are afraid of proliferation, not just military, right?

[samcostanza]

Need I remind you, one asteroid a few miles wide would be the END of humanity? It happened in Chixilub, 65 million years ago, and 130 million years before that, and about 200 million years before that, IIRC.

Eventually, our number will come up, and unfortunately, Bruce Willis is getting too old to go up and blow the asteroid up. Having colonies off-world would ensure the survival of humanity, and many other species.

[aoeaoae]

"It happened in Chixilub"

who's arguing?

the real future of Humanity (as oppose to the fantasy "jumps in space") might just be this slow expansion on the 0.1c asteroid-sized Orions going out to colonize the Galaxy. Which might take up to a million years.

So our main problem is a mental, spiritual one. Can the culture grow out from us to sustain such a future. Because the current one sure as hell can't.

[alexandrecreep]

shut up.

[jamesgamerguy3]

nukes are danruse no mater how you use them

we can't contain all the radiation and what if one explodes premature , that would be the end of earth .

even if we build it up in space that would mean we would have to carry the uranium or plutonium up into space and we all remember what happened to the colombia and the challenger sending nukes up into space is just to damn dangerous no matter how you do it the risks out way the benefits

[samcostanza]

Um, genius, you do realize that run-away chain reactions can't happen in non-fissile material, right?  Or did Comrade Obama's schools teach you different?

Either way, you, sir, are WRONG!

[WolksVagon449]

Haha that's fucking metal.

[Necromas]

"This is the first time an advance in human technology has been prevented by political reasons"

I laughed so hard at that.

[WolYou]

What a waste of energy.

[bob1qaz]

Infact it is ridiculously more efficient(using nuclear bombs) then using conventional means of projection, especially oil/gas. Keep in mind it can reach a minimum-maximum speed of 1/10th the speed of light. If you call that a waste of energy your insane we could send a manned craft to pluto within 1-2 years. Which would cost a fraction of what it is costing to put soldiers in iraq.

[jamesgamerguy3]

but think of the radiation that would be around the earth

the radiation that would be let off from this thing would

be several times the radiation all man kind has used in the last century we also have to thin about the fact that we wouldn't be able to contain that much of the radiation that would be let off from getting that thing into orbit

think of how manny people would die as a cause of radiation poisoning and radiation last for 1000's of years

[bob1qaz]

The whole radiation thing is overblown. The atomosphere would protect us from it. No one would die from radiation poisoning. Do you realize how much radiation you must be exposed to to die of radiation?

[jamesgamerguy3]

it takes 1000's of years to wipe radiation away

and it would only take a few hundred for the radiation to

contaminate earth . what do you mean overblown ?

you don't need that much radiation to get cancer and cancer is can kill you we would also have a lot more children born deformed

deadly

[bob1qaz]

Hahaha I have read all those studies too it's a bunch of crap.

[jamesgamerguy3]

by definition you are stupid

[bob1qaz]

Wrong, but by definition you are ignorant. You see unlike you I have some common sense, you are ignorant you just have a lack of correct knowledge, but there is no way I can ascertain your intelligence level through our small conversation. Your whole nuclear winter third arm radiation theory has been debunked years ago.

[jamesgamerguy3]

so if that is true then that would mean you at least have some evidence

unlike you i have a few examples of radiation contamination

hiroshima / nagasaki you can still see people getting cancer in these areas

[bob1qaz]

HAHAHA NO SHIT! I can give you examples of people getting cancer in Hawii LAWL. Cancer has been around for millions and millions of years it is nothing new. It is encoded in our DNA.

[jamesgamerguy3]

do you know any thing about how you get cancer ?

apparently you don't

and no it's not in you DNA if t was we would all have cancer

[bob1qaz]

We do all have cancer it is just dormant.

[jamesgamerguy3]

if its dormant its not cancer lol

[bob1qaz]

Correct that's why it's DORMANT CANCER. Cancer is encoded in the DNA, the gene just has to be activated. Residual radiation is only really created on ground detonations. Why would anyone detonate a nuclear bomb on the ground?

[jamesgamerguy3]

do you even know what cancer is?

do you have any proof of DNA encoded cancer

[bob1qaz]

Cancer is dormant.

[jamesgamerguy3]

cancer is when a cell goes crazy and starts fucking up all the other cells

cancer is not dormant cancer is a deformity in the cells reproductive functions

what grade are you in?

they teach you this stuff in 10th grade cancer is not dormant

[bob1qaz]

Strange maybye science changed, I learned that in biology in college. Cancer is DORMANT everyone has it. It gets activated and your cells follow the fucked up command.(lack of better terms)

[jamesgamerguy3]

i wont believe you until you can find an article that states this information

[kurtsemler]

Search "Project Orion: A True Story Of The Atomic Spaceship" on Google Books, or for a brief summation of it, search ""project orion nuclear propulsion" on Google. You'll find all the declassified information you could possibly want to know about this project.

[samcostanza]

You are so far off base that it isn't even remotely amusing.

Orion would be launched from the South Pacific, from a specially prepared surface that would minimize fallout. Airbursts yield almost no fallout, so the only potential would be for the initial blast that would lift the ship from the surface. The first blast would probably lift her to about 1,500' or so. Subsequent blasts would only effect the atmosphere. As the ship gets higher, each blast would throw it farther.

[trufiend138]

@bob1qaz no not a manned crew, but a robotic crew...human flight is not necessary for deep space exploration, at least not yet.

[ikillhippies]

@bob1qaz radiation and the proliferation of nuclear weapons is an issue though and i think its flippant to ignore them.

[toggsuk]

It would be a much better use of atomic power than using it to kill each other though :D

[MarsFKA]

Orion could never be used inside the atmosphere of any inhabited planet. The problem is not its enormous power, but its ability to make a large area around the launch pad uninhabitable for a very long time. Anyone who has read "Footfall", by Niven and Pournelle, doesn't need much of an imagination to imagine what Bellingham looked like after the Orion ship "Michael" launched.

[kea444]

The salient feature of the Orion plan was not in atmosphere launch, but vastly increasing the distance manned voyages might go with minimal mass dedicated to fuel storage.

[VaemerRiit]

There are ways to cut down on the fallout and radiation.

To Reduce the fall out you launch off of a metal plate similar to the pusher plate on the Orion sprayed with the same graphite based Oil. This prevents any material being sucked up into the nuclear fireball and coming back down as fallout.

Radiation can also be reduced by experimenting with some of the radioactives that have a half life of hours or days and make the Bombs that are used inside of the atmosphere out of theat material.

[bukee]

other solutions include:

-building it in space

-getting it into space with chemical methods, then using nuclear methods from there on

[chromophore]

buckee is right. Infact Freeman Dyson has laster said that the so called nuclear fall out was not much of a worry.

He said that we could use conventional to move out of the atmosphere. This conventional element could then be thrown off.

And then after it was safe could these cbe used. A much improved recent design called the mini mag orion is even safer that way.

These problems are minor and grossly exaggerated.

[chromophore]

bukee is right.

Infact Freeman Dyson has himself said that we could use conventional methods till the time we moved out of the atmosphere. It is not necessarily that you have to use the nuclear methods at launch itself.

These conventional fuel tanks then could be thrown off. And nuclear methods could take over.

A newer design and much improved at that, called the mini-mag orion reduces these fears even more.

These problems are actually not big problems, nothing that you can't go around.

[chromophore]

oops!

apologies that the comment got posted two times. I thought it did not get posted the first time.

Apologies.

[bambamsmith]

The most awsome thing I have ever seen... like wow dude

[roidroid]

this is really good footage of the initial experiments with pellets of C4. Much better than the footage i uploaded

[Gangway1111]

So, was Apollo really worth it when we could have had this?

[SailorBarsoom]

Well, we didn't get this. We didn't even get NERVA.

[loperspest]

When I was a kid, we got from a family friend these kids encyclopedias from the mid 60's.What captivated me was it had all sorts of articles about the programs been thought of at that time.Electra, Nova, and the biggest of all, ORION. It didn't go into detail, but it did mention its advantages, and basically how it worked. throwing bombs out the back to go forward.I had often gotten spacebooks as a child, and had fallen in love with Apollo, but I have always wished we could have done it.