It was per launch, but when the payload for a 10,000 ton launch is over 5,000 tons, you don't need many. They were also figuring on a ground ignition of the nuke bomb pusher plate. When ignition occurs above the atmosphere, as in this video, there is no fallout, no casualties, no reason not to proceed, except for a scrap of paper signed by a bunch of frightened old men in the 60's. They thought a piece of paper could keep them safe, when only mutual fear, and respect, could do that.
I got the statistic from a BBC documentary made by the son of Project Orion's chief engineer. I note how you didn't disagree with my other comment, that JFK cancelled the project because he found it abhorrent and called it the "dooms day device". I won't write again so have a nice life Dan.
@erichargrave12 I saw the documentary. Freeman Dyson said his original estimate was 1 to 10 deaths per launch, but he believed he could get the figure down to less than 1. The "doomsday device" was brought on by some stupid Air Force generals who thought they could get more money for the program if they showed Kennedy an Orion converted to an orbiting battleship. Bad idea. Have a nice life yourself, but don't believe ANYTHING you see or hear on TV or from the government, any government.
In the animation, nuclear bombs are detonated behind a blast shield to propel the ship forward. This idea was first developed in 1950s, but cancelled by JFK because it would kill 1 in 100 humans for every launch and militarise space. He called it the doomsday device. This film depicts a bad idea that should be laid to rest.
@erichargrave12 Make that figure 1 to 10 possible deaths per launch. The vehicle shown in the animation uses 18 shutle sized boosters per launch and produces 0 fallout. God, I love the way you guys fake numbers; I used to work for the government, and we faked them all the time. Reminds me of the faked numbers discovered and reported by the Russians at the latest "Global Warming" farce earlier this year. Turns out the Brits were faking Russian number to show Russ winters were getting warmer.
@erichargrave12 Do you really expect anyone with intelligence will believe your FAKED figure of 60 million dead (1 in 100) per Orion lauch? I imagine you will do what all people of your ilk do when caught in an obviously lie, namely crawl back into the woodwork and hide a bit. Or you will come in and edit your post to something like 1 to 100 dead per launch. You will hope that the majority of viewers will believe you always meant this. You won't get away with that; I'll be here to let them know.
@GoChokeOn1 As H.G. Wells said "It's the universe or nothing for Man." Clearly, a majority of US citizens have opted for nothing (bread and circuses, the creation of a gigantic artificial womb for us all whether we want it or not). My hope must be that some other country of men chooses the universe. Whatever this country, or power, is it will quickly become the dominant force on Earth. The US will fade into the obscurity it has chosen.
Step 1) Create space elevator, including tether and counter weight.
Step 2) Use the elevator to ferry material into space in order to build the mothership.
Step 3) Build mothership and ferry fuel or any kind decided upon up to the ship
Step 4) AWESOME SPACE ADVENTURE!!!
Seriously though, the space elevator is by far the best option, however requires a very durable and resilient material to allow the counter weight to pull the cable taught.
@TheReasonWhyGuy Assuming a space elevator is even technically feasible you would need the payload of several Orion launches to build it. You need at least 50,000 tons of material in 24 hour orbit. This would be the payload of 5,000 space shuttle sized chemical rockets. So, at best, you're putting the cart before the horse. The realistic procedure: Build 20,000 ton Orion. Fly it to 24 hour orbit 10 times delivering needed material. Use elevator to build a REALLY big Orion. Go anywhere in space.
@TheReasonWhyGuy Of course those 10 Orion flights can also build a 50,000 ton factory in space that could use nearbye asteroidal material to construct a super Orion vehicle of any imaginable size. The elevator then becomes redundant except for possibly hauling up the literally millions of people who would be leaving Earth behind forever.
@1DanConnors The elevator is thousands of times cheaper to operate, and in turn, a single elevator can extend another elevator, and then those 2 can extend 2 more, and those 4 can extend 4 more... far more efficient than wasting 10 trips just to get a thing up there to make it so you can actually do shit up there.
Besides, you numbers sound very arbitrary, which makes me think you pulled it out of your ass.
Please put it back, it's starting to smell up the place...
@TheReasonWhyGuy You are talking about a construction that is almost 50,000 miles long (counting the counterweight extending above the 24 hour orbit. I believe 50,000 tons is a very small mass for such a project. By comparison 50,000 miles of railroad track would mass about 5 million tons. A space elevator is going to be subjected to far more stress than any railroad track, so the figure 50,000 tons is almost ludicrously low. And, since you have introduced pleasantries, do the math, genius.
@1DanConnors Hahaha, you use the idea of railroad track as a modern equivalent? XD
The proposed material, if you actually read up on it.
Is the incredibly light and strong, yet admit-ably expensive, carbon nanotubes.
Of coarse, your figure also ignored that the area with most needed tensile strength is at the geostationary orbit level, and required strength drops incredibly low as you reach sea level.
I'll say this, the elevator is tricky, but orion we could do today :)
@TheReasonWhyGuy Then we agree. If we can do it today (and we CAN) let's do it. The explosive force of the 1,000 mininukes needed to push a first generation Orion into space and on to Mars is less than a megaton. There were singular airbursts in the 50's and early 60's that released 20 to 50 times that energy (and fallout). Incidentally there is nothing old fashioned about a mag-lev train going 400 mph, but the track still runs about 100 tons a mile.
@TheReasonWhyGuy I've been disgusted by lame comments on the disaster of an Orion crashing on Florida and sinking the whole state. The inherent risk of a disintegrating space elevator would be much more likely. The surface tether could be taken out by a single terrorrist in a piper cub. Higher altitude (and harder to repair) ruptures could be perpetrated by relatively cheap high power lasers or simple explosive missiles. On the whole the elevator's much more vulnerable than Orion to terrorrists.
@TheReasonWhyGuy My apologies, I didn't mean to drag terrorrists into the issue. It's just the 1st thing critics dredge up about Orion. Here, I must admit ignorance. I have no idea what you mean by "pm". Like you. I'm annoyed by YouTube's 100 word limit on comments--really not enough space to say anything. I have reread my material on the elevator, and it doesn't now seem that far in the future. But it still require a starting mass in 24 hour orbit of at least 50,000 tons.
Yeah you wouldn't want to be sending humans in such a ship. EEk! Also those extend-able arms...one impact of a piece of comet or rock flying by and it would be bye bye arm and possibly bye bye orion project.
@bluelotuspetals ...And so, a government elected by a populace, the majority of whom are utter morons, cancelled the most important step forward by Humanity in the last millenium.
@1DanConnors there's more to follow in the stupid moron department and also thankfully in the genius inventor department. We'll get there and hopefully without destroying the human form we are clothed in. I believe there are safer alternatives to traveling through the dangerous (so called) realm of space without having to further stress our forms with nuclear pollution; I'm anti nuke and I'm willing to bet anyone exposed to this stuff will be as well.
@bluelotuspetals Without nuclear power we're going nowhere in space, unless you think the 1.4 light second trip to our moon counts as space travel. I worked on top of 8 nuclear reactors while in the Navy (USS Enterprize) and never had any problem with it. If our ship had been nuke bombed--this was cold war era--all that would have been left of us would have been those 8 containment globes. Solar sails, ion beams, mass drivers--extremely low thrust/weight, useless. Chemical--the moon's the limit.
@1DanConnors And that my friend is where thinking outside of the box comes in, so to speak. See cold fusion for one. And don't tell me it isn't existent.
@bluelotuspetals I know there were a series of hoaxes back in the 90's claiming the invention of cold fusion devices. It's self evident they were hoaxes, or the world would now be shifting rapidly to their use. For nuclear power fusion to take place you need 4 things: great heat and pressure, containment, and time. Since you claim to be anti-nuke power in the first place I don't know why you bring it up. For Orion the logical next step would be the use of fusion pulses instead of fission bombs.
@bluelotuspetals The great thing about nuke pulse travel is that so much payload is available on a really big version (100 MTons) that shielding can be solid steel, yards thick, that not only completely protects against bomb blast radiation, but reduces cosmic ray exposure to less than it is on Earth. In other words the crew of a 2nd or 3rd generation Orion, starbound, would recieve less radiation than we do. What do you mean by comments page?
@bluelotuspetals With the current administration in the US, I wouldn't waste a second trying. Obama has already virtually shut down NASA, useless as it was. We are now paying Russia to bring our people to the space station. With the shutdown of the STS, inneficient as it was, the US no longer has the capability to even take men into low Earth orbit. We are now less capable of space travel than we were in the 1960's. The tree huggers have completely won; technological advance is defeated. Enjoy!!
@1DanConnors You're totaly wrong. Obama increased NASA's budget. The US does have the ability to take people into low Orbit. If we had to we could do it tommarow, which would be wierd because we have them up there right now anyway. There were multiple points in the 60's when we couldn't get people into space. Now is like those, exept we have people in space.
Almost every envirmentalis I have ever talked to is pro NASA. NASA has been a part of the modern envirnmental movement from the start.
@monokhem What US rocket are you going to use to put men into low earth orbit? Shuttle's retired, and if you wanted to reopen it you'd be lucky to use it again this year. In the early 60's a Gemini crew was supposed to dock with Agena payload. The Agena had problems-couldn't be used. NASA did a turn-around, and had another Gemini crew take off in only a few days. They linked up with the 1st crew in less than a week. THERE'S NO WAY WE COULD DO THAT TODAY. NASA in bed with enviroes has its costs.
@monokhem One of them is that NASA can't even mention a nuclear space ship of any kind, solid core, gaseous core, nuke pulse (Orion). They are left with solar sails--one square mile of sail providing maybe a ton of thrust; solar powered ion rockets--ditto. Chem jobs with refueling stations at destination. Laser propelled ships (God help the crew if the beam is off by a millisecond of arc). None of this stuff is going to get us to Mars, let alone the stars. Enviroes are strangling space travel.
@1DanConnors What do you think they are planning of powering VASIMR with? NASA has been researching this stuff for years. You just aren't paying attention and are comming up with paranoid thoeries to fill in the gaps.
@monokhem I have read about VASIMIR. It's an ion engine without electrodes. The most powerful version on the drawing board creates 5 newtons of thrust from a 300 kilogram engine giving it a thrust/weight ratio of 1 to 660. In addition it requires large space radiators to remove waste heat. The expected max Isp is only 5,000. Even if powered by a nuclear reactor (not in design yet) it would have only a fraction of Orion's capabilities. Dyson wasn't paranoid; Orion WAS killed by politics.
@1DanConnors That's research, And Orion wasn't killed because of politics. It was killed because it is stupid. I've got a great idea, lets have Fukashima all over the Uninted States! What if when we lost Challenger it took the entire state of Florida with it. Or like Columbia it came down all over the western half of the country?
We can't manage to keep the ocean out of one of our best cities, and you think we can make a nuclear powerplant fly safely?
@monokhem If you're dumb enough to build a near ocean city below sea level (New Orleans) expect it to be flooded by any hurricane that comes near. What's really dumb is rebuilding it in the same location--still below sea level. Your fantasy of a crashing Orion taking out Florida is typical environmentalist propoganda. It shows you have no grasp of the physics of nuclear bombs. An accidental explosion of 1 bomb would vaporise the ship and all the remaining bombs; only 1 bomb at a time is armed.
@1DanConnors You don't know anything about how or why cities are built. Ports are built at the mouths of rivers. That's just how it is. Read up on sea gates. Holding the ocean back is something we are much better at than nuclear power. You are the one pretending radiation doesn't exist and you want to act like I don't know anything about physics? You are the one with the fantasies.
@monokhem I don't argue with name callers. You deliver 0 facts laced with heavy emotionalism, which is typical of environmentalists. In a public debate your usual tactic is to shout down anyone who disagrees with you. This is my final reply to you. Rant and rave as you wish.
@1DanConnors I didn't call you any names, and you are the one who degraded the tone of the conversation by calling people names because they don't agree with you and labeling things you don't want to accept as fantasies. Apearantly you can't stand to take what you are all to eager to emotionaly dish out.
Everyone is an envirnmentalis to some degree. Most of the people I know that call themselves evironmentalists don't think I'm one because i like nuclear power and don't want VET testing.
@asdfghjkl48402 True; the sun fuses 400 million tons of hydrogen a second just to keep us warm. That's the equivalent of about 60 million 100 megaton H-bombs every second. Fortunately, no human legislature can pass a law ordering it to stop,
@Zerghumper Alpa and Beta radiation are only harmful if the objects emitting them are inhaled or swallowed. Gamma radiation is bad, but the neutron flux produced by a nuclear bomb burst or a melting nuclear reactor is lethal. Fortunately this neutron flux is extremely limited in range (less than a mile), and the neutrons have a very short half life (under a minute).
Yeah this video shows the boosters burning out well below the cloud line. Are you going to blast your way all the way out of Earths atmosphere? That seems terribly inefficient. Especially while sill withing Earth's gravity.
@Enatbyte Burnout velocity at shutdown approximately 6,000 feet per second. Top of solid fuelled boosters' flight path over 50 miles high. Nuke bomb pulse begins above 99 percent of the atmosphere. There is NO fallout. There is NO radiation release to the ecosphere. We should save Humanity in spite of itself!!!
@Pandoranage4101 It's not really a subject to joke about. I've read way too many idiotic comments in this "debate" by people who thought they knew better than the team of nuclear physicists who came up with the idea. If you want a topic to laugh--or cry--about, take the current state of the US government.
Your statement shows how little most know about radioactive fallout. The use of nuclear explosions in space, especially out past the Van Allen belts would be completely harmless to us here on earth (think about the sun's radiation) , and in the vastness of space, it would be the equivalent of a spec of pepper dropped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.Turning space radioactive would be about as successful as trying to turn the Ocean yellow by having someone piss in it.
@Zerghumper You think that's bad...most of the american population doesn't realize (they slept in school) that Alpha and Beta particles are EASY to deal with. Gamma is a killer...but only for a given moment or given materials. hmmph.
It took a team of phyicists six years to figure out nuclear warheads were not a viable propulsion source in the inner solar system? Come on, they figured that shit out the first three hours. "Hey Bert..." "What?" "You know this shit will leave radioactive dust from Earth to the moon to Mars and it's going to drift everywhere." ..."Yeah but don't tell anybody till we've had a few years to play with it. These government salaries beat the heck out of MIT."
@Pandoranage4101 That team of physicists found nothing of the sort. What they did discover was that a great step forward for Humanity could be derailed by politics.
@Pandoranage4101 The really unfortunate thing is that people with your mentality have just as much influence over what we're going to do--or not do in space as those of us who actually know what we're talking about.
Vertical take-off was always a terrible idea. It was the idea NASA went with to keep the defence force investors happy. Foolish waste of the world's time.
Vertical take-off was always a terrible idea. It was the idea NASA went with to keep th edefence force investors happy. Foolish waste of the world's time.
@Lightflightpilot As opposed to...what? You need to go UP to get into space. How are you supposed to get there--horizontally?? The idea of a 10,000 ton, nuclear bomb powered rocket taking off like a plane is wierd. How big a wing do you think you'd need? How many nuke bomb pulses before the wing fell off? A large C-5 size plane dropping a 200 ton rocket from 5 miles up might get 5 tons to orbit. 1500 flights would deliver the same payload as one Orion.
The long arms are to prevent a disorienting Coriolis effect (in which falling objects seem to be deflected sideways) from rotational pseudo-gravity by creating a larger spin radius. Or at least that seems to be the most plausible explanation anyway, correct me if I'm wrong.
@QuantumPhenomena You're correct. A spin diameter of roughly 1600 ft. provides an artificial "gravity" by rotating twice a minute. Getting the same by just rotating the 160 ft. wide ship would require spinning it at over 10 rpm, which would leave everyone on board dizzy and nauseated..
@bertazoid they are for generating artificial gravity, a neccesity for deep space manned travel. they are really really long because at larger radius/spin you dont get dizzy from the spinning becuz the spacecraft would rotate a lot more slowly to generate the artificial gravity force.
so called "democracy" and so called "free market" prohibit such projects from life. period. thats why science suck big time in current situation, not only space exploration.
I still think you don't quite realise how big a super orion is this is a quote taken from wiki - "super" Orion design; at 8 million tons, it could easily be a city. Go look up project orion on wiki, I watched a fil about it and one thing that JFK was affraid of was nuclear weapons in space and a nuclear arms race for nukes in space.
@milesK12 A super orion is the same size as the mother spaceship out of Alien. If you wanted to compare a super orion to a trident go to a beach and look left and look right along the sea length then look at the massive cargo ship which is several miles out, the cargo ship is the trident the rest of the sea is Orion. Then you begin to realise what you are dealing with here.
@milesK12 The reason i am so intrested in Orion is because one night I was thinking of ways we could reach other worlds then I thought of the most powerful thing which man currently has, which obviously is the atomic bomb. I then had an idea about using bombs to power a ship I typed "riding an explosion" and all manner of things into the internet to see if it had already been done which led me to the orion project.
@milesK12 I don't think you read my posts very carefully. I said my "guestimate" of the first intersteller Orion would be in the range of 1E8 to 1E9 tons. That means 100 million tons to 1 billion tons, with a final arrival at destination payload of one to five million tons. It won't be a fission pulse, but a fusion pulse engine. It wouldn't have to be all in one vehicle, but would probably be divided up into 4 to 10 ships of 25E6 to 1E8 tons each. Early model Orions would be far smaller.
@milesK12 The one portrayed in this film masses 10,000 tons, not counting the strap on solid fuel boosters used to lift it clear of atmosphere before it begins to fire its nukes. I became interested in Orion while it was actually being built, and I think the worst mistake the United States ever made was to cancel it. It was cancelled because of politics and fear, and our world today is much smaller, poorer. and limited than it would have been otherwise. I hope we will grow up and build it.
@milesK12 We won't have true space travel until we have a ship this capable. Orion will actually improve the odds of Human survival by enabling the construction of artificial worldlets from debris in the asteroid belt, minor moons, and the Oort cloud. Potential enclosed areas equal to thousands of times the area of
earth could be built. Humanity would survive a nuke war on Earth, as most of it would no longer live here.
I wish we could build one and send it to the Gliese Star System, to G581g. we could get there in 200 years if we sent built and launched an interstellar- pulsed fusion orion by next year. Sadly, this may never happen =(
I've got an even better generalization of the re-imagining of Project Orion; intead of turing around the Orion spacecraft to land on Mars, bring a space-elevator cable with you to drop down to the Mars surface!
Everytime I hear about this project, I always wonder about the force on the crew and ship during acceleration. This was the first time I noticed the shock absorbers attached to the inertial plate. Though they'd rob the acceleration, I guess they'd be necessary, and we could spare the virtually weightless "fuel." Still, the crew's basically gonna be getting rear-ended repeatedly. Anyone have more info. on this aspect?
@question444 For the earlier, smaller (10,000 tons) version it will be rough. When truly large (1,000,000 tons or larger) versions are built, they will be built with multiple engines. A ship with 16 engines, with 2 opposing engines firing 8 times a second, would smooth out the thrust to almost normal. Such a ship would have to be built in space. It would then have the advantage that overall accelleration could be less than 1 gravity.
@question444 actually the g-force is highly tolerable, designed to be 2-4g's to be exact...there are shock plates on ass end of craft to absorb the force.
@ThePingasMightier Are you talking about the Van Allen radiation belts? The Apollo Moon shots went right through the middle of them with no harm to the crews. The shielding required for reentry to Earth minimized exposure. Orion would carry far heavier shielding to protect the crew from radiation from nuclear bombs detonating only a few hundred feet away.
@StevPhillpis - Thanks for the post. I read about the Orion like in '63 or '64 in something called the SRA reader that declared we were close to a grand tour of the planets though they didn't use the term grand tour. I thought it was fiction. When I finally got to read Dyson's book on it, wow what a big vision. They were using slide-rulers at the time. I still think it is a great idea.
I'll do the usual youtube meaningless comment and say: GO ORION!
Let's hope the environmentalists pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that this would actually help the ecosystem: if we can produce energy in orbit and get raw materials from the asteroids, we can shut down a lot of pollution-producing sites on the home planet.
And you're going to get around the functional destruction of every piece of electronic equipment within thousands of miles on the ground how, exactly? In 1957 it might not have mattered all that much. Even in 63. In 2010, you've spelled the death of the society electronic.
@aiwahead A mid pacific lauch minimizes EMP. That and the fact that the propulsive bombs are very low in power compared to the gigantic midair blasts of the 50's and 60's. Total explosive force of all the bombs used in an Orion launch is less than one megaton, compared to 10-20 megatons (average) for a single 50's or 60's air burst. The largest bomb used in an Orion launch is only 20 kilotons, one fiftieth of a megaton. EMP should be negligible.
@aiwahead Orion was legislated out of existence for similar ridiculous objections. If we really want to do away with all things harmful to our precious electronics society why don't we pass legislation doing away with solar flares and sunspot activity. Together these two natural phenomena do much more to disrupt electronics than all the nuclear bombs ever exploded. No guts; no glory.
@1DanConnors Then it's agreed! No more Solar Flares nor Sunspots! Meeting adjourned. Thank goodness my pong game will be safe....
Me thinks the kids watch too many science friction movies, several have made it appear that any nuclear bomb detonated in the atmosphere would create a worldwide EMP pulse strong enough to knock out their precious Ipods and gonad warmers..
@RazaTheHacker The bigger the Orion vehicle is the less explosive energy is wasted. For intersteller flights lasting decades to centuries, we'd be looking at a vehicle massing roughly 1E9 tons with an Isp of 2E6 (20,000 KM per second). The really attractive thing about Orion is, we could start building this intersteller vehicle today.
@Makkerz The extending modules rotate to provide an artificial "'gravity" for the crew during the coast period. Fully open they are about 500 meters across. Rotating twice per minute they provide a centrifugal force of about one g. This eliminates muscle loss and other types of damage to the crew. Orion was cancelled for political reasons; it WOULD have worked.
I've thought a lot about space propulsion and, personally, I do not like the idea. You waste most of your energy out the sides. More importantly, it isn't easy to keep cool when your floating in a thermos.
@jag9998 well, Orion is probably the only propulsion method that can (theoretically) deliver such performance without needing any dedicated radiator for the engine or the power plant powering the engine.
That's because most of the energy isn't contained by walls. Sure it is wasteful, but your car ain't more efficient either.
@Iamthenoi Same way it got there--a series of propulsive nuclear shaped charges. When you're using nukes for fuel one small (200-300 pounds) bomb has the energy of a thousand TONS of normal chemical fuel.
@bobafetthotmail Wasteful with nuclear bombs for propulsion means a low end Isp of 10,000, which is better than the most optimistic performance expected with an ion engine. Ion engines are lucky if they can produce a thrust of .001 gravities. Orion produces 2 or 3 g's with ease. In its most efficient (largest) model it can produce an Isp of 2,000,000 driving a ship to 10% of speed of light. This is the only known system capable of manned intesteller flight.
@1DanConnors And with Cold War tech, no less. I think there must be more problems than initially foreseen, noone ever tried the concept beyond that thingy with conventional explosives. And since you cannot test nukes in the open or in space.... we will probably never know.
@bobafetthotmail Werner von Braun, developer of the Saturn 5 which took us to the moon, became an instant convert when he saw the demo tapes of the initial Orion tests. Orion wasn't killed by technical problems; it was scrapped because of a scrap of paper--the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty, which has been a complete failure. Nations as backwards as India and North Korea now have nukes. The next great advance in Human history was stopped by politics. It's time for that treaty to go away.
@bobafetthotmail A truly daunting task. My belief is that it will be far harder to re-educate the people of the world to see reality, drop their superstitious dread of nuclear power, and begin really remaking the world than it will be to actually build Orion. My parents' generation, with its quaint enthusiasm went from zero to the moon in less than 10 years. Hard to believe, but they also defeated Hitler and his buddies.
@1DanConnors That is one thing that scares me in this over Politically Correct society we have turned into. If a Hitler were to rise to power with global ambitions today, just how would we handle it? There would be too much bloodshed for this pc world to even fathom. In our last few "wars" the American casualties in all three wars combined did not approach that of a single day in WWI or WWII and yet it would seem once we hit that 1000 dead mark 65% of the population cry it is time to withdraw
@BadSmaxx Hope you're not counting Vietnam as one of the last 3 wars, because we did lose 58,000 kia there. As for the action in Iraq I think the main problem is we didn't withdraw the army when the actual war was over. We used it to try to turn Iraq into a democracy and a friend--which isn't going to happen. We should have just kicked their butts and left. And I wouldn't give a damn what happened to their two bit country afterwards. I agree the magic number does seem to be 1,000.
@1DanConnors Absolutely not counting Vietnam. Gulf War I and II and Afghanistan. Even in the first Gulf War people were extremely squeamish about the thought of a soldier dying. And the media's slant on the war often baffles me, I totally agree with the withdrawal on Iraq war II we should have left much earlier! However in the first Iraq war we should have either stayed another month or not made the promises we did.
@BadSmaxx Both gulf wars were about oil, which this country can't do without. Oil is a good reason to go to war, and, in fact, it's what finally got us into World War 2. The Japanese wanted the oil in the west indies, and we didn't want them to have it. They were going to use it to expand their already large empire. When Japan saw that we weren't going to allow them to get the oil, that's when they decided to attack us.
@1DanConnors If they built an Orion surely oil wouldn't be a problem they'd be able to harvest it from Titan as easy as harvesting water on earth the only issue is logisitics, I'm not saying they should do it as we need to move away from using too much oil anyway and simply turning planet earth into another titan by polluting the crap out of it isn't the awnser I'm affraid earth's the only planet we know of which is 100% compatible for humans but orion could change that.
@milesK12 Why would oil be a problem at all? If you're talking about the oil sprayed on the pusher plate to keep it cool, that amounts to less than 1,000 barrels per shot. American cars go through 10,000,000 barrels a day using 1,000 barrels every 9 seconds. Assuming 10 Orion launches a year (delivering 60,000 tons of payload to LEO or 40,000 tons to escape velocity) that's 10,000 tons--one tenth of one percent of what our cars use in a day. I see no problem.
@1DanConnors The comment was in regards to both Gulf wars. Why go to war at all for oil when there is a planet which practically rains oil. Plus you would not use the orion module to land and take off from earth only as a delivery system you would use the space elevator as the delivery system to and from orion. As for 60,000 tons have you read the theoretical size of the super orion I think it could be adapted to haul just a tad more than 60,000 tons somehow.
@milesK12 As of today total consumption of oil worldwide is around 5 million tons a day, almost 2 billion tons a year. Orions--even multimillion ton Orions aren't going to make a dent in that figure. Space elevators require material with a tensile strength not attainable in the near future. Oil, unfortunately, is a reason for us to go to war, mostly through the efforts of the Sierra club, greenpeace, etc., who have assured that domestic consumption exceeds production.
@1DanConnors Dude why are we even talking about oil, hydrogen from the moon is a more worthy fuel but since oil is the topic of discussion here how come oil is currently transported world wide by oil tankers, please explain to me the difference between a GIGANTIC (and I can't stress this enough!) space tanker and a sea fairing tanker? If you can give me a sensible answer that doesn't involve trying to bombard me with useless stats then I won't dismiss your argument?
@milesK12 The only valid point I can see that supports you supply and demand issue is the distance from titan to earth by orion and the distance from oil well to land by tanker but I believed I already mention a case for mutiple orions and these things will make an oil tanker look diddy in comparison plus it's easier and safer to collect from Titan surface rather than drilling along our ocean floors.
@milesK12 You won't be able to lower oil from Titan by way of a space elevator; the materials don't exist to build one. 200 super Orions each carrying 10 million tons of oil would have a highly detrimental effect on the atmosphere (not to mention the land) wherever they land. A 15 million ton Orion would need about 150 megatons of explosive force to go from LEO to land. 200 such vehicles a year would need the equivalent of 30 gigatons of nuke explosives. That's more than all the nukes on Earth.
@1DanConnors By comparison 250,000 ton tankers, each hauling over 100,000 tons of oil, travel at a relatively slow speed, around 10 knots. They are very energy efficient and relatively harmless to the ecosphere. Using about 10,000 tons of oil to haul 100KTons, 100 of them would burn a megaton of oil to deliver 10 megatons. A 15 MTon Orion would need the equivalent of 1,000 150kiloton nuke bombs to deorbit and land. 200 such landings would need 200,000 150 kiloton nuclear bombs. That's too much.
@1DanConnors 15million tons is the limit for a super Orion landing on Earth. That's because of the cube root squared law, which shows that engines must grow far larger (in proportion to vehicle size) than the vehicle's overall dimensions. A 15 MTon Orion would require almost half a square mile of engines just to take off. No possible combination of chem rockets could lift such a beast clear of atmosphere, so you'd be firing the equivalent of a 150 KTon bomb every second at sea level.
@1DanConnors In free space far larger ships would be possible, because you don't need a full "g" to accelerate. My guestimate for a manned intersteller vehicle is from 1E8 to 1E9 tons, with a deccelerated payload at destination of one million to 5 million tons and a transit time equal to 10 times the distance in light years.
@1DanConnors You’re actually wrong the materials do exist to build one they are called carbon nano tubes they are the materials which make up the tether. The problem is not the materials but the manufacturing process to make enough of them at present it costs too much to make a tether which will reach from land to space then all you need is a counterweight to keep the tether taught like a space station or an asteroid. The technology already exists, the money and will to make it however does not.
@1DanConnors As for the Orion itself, there is no need for an Orion to ever land or take off from a planet it would simply drop a different tether down to the Titans surface and pull up the mining machine. There is no need for an orion to ever launch from earth. With an elevator it could be built in space. All these things are feasible. Like I said it's not a question of the technology not existing it's a case of money, manufacturing and the will to get off our backsides and just do it.
@milesK12 But as well all know human are lazy creatures. Rich men don't care about the future of the human race they care more about dollar signs, digital bank figures, sluts and keeping everything as it is. They say slave labour has been abolished. I say bullshit, otherwise we'd all be living a life where money doesn't exist, robots do pretty much everything and we do things because we want to and not because we have to, to survive.
@1DanConnors (By comparison 250,000 ton tankers....) This is all completely irrelevant and there is no need to ever launch or land an Orion that would be insane as well as difficult because of the nuclear proliferation treaty between the US and Russia. You need to read up more about the space elevator and stop seeing Orion as the whole picture it's only 1 piece of a much bigger picture. The space elevator is a reality and not just a piece of science fiction.
@milesK12 Not wanting to rain on your parade, but the space elevator is NOT a reality. Every study I've looked at on the internet admits the elevator is not possible with today's technology. By comparison we could start work on an operational Orion today. Orion does not have to physically lower gigatons of oil to be very helpful for Earth's energy needs; it also doesn't have to go to Titan and suck oil out of its atmosphere (if that's what's in Titan's atmosphere).
@1DanConnors Dan it says it's not possible using todays technology because we currently do not have the industry/capacity to make a nono carbon fibre tether that is serveral miles long. That's the only real issue, the technology exists and the ability to produce that technology but to produce it in mass bulk does not but could exist easily. I know because I have read several studies in regards to it both written by nasa and independent.
@milesK12 We also have produced antimatter (in extremely small batches), but not in any forseeable future are we going to be able to use it as fuel in an intersteller space ship. It's just too incredibly dangerous to have a fuel tank with a megaton of antimatter anywhere near a crew. These carbon nanotubes may have the tensile strength to do the job, but I don't believe they have the sheer strength to cope with forces operating 90 degrees from their tensile direction.
@1DanConnors Yeah something like 1gram of antimatter is produced every year which is enough to run a light bulb or something. I remember reading up about it somewhere. I think it was the BBC's space page on alternative space vehicles.
@milesK12 A gram of antimatter will explode with the force of 8,000 tons of TNT. A million tons exploding after magnetic container failure will (briefly) outshine the sun. That's why antimatter will never be used as fuel for a spaceship. If the space elevator IS perfected and bulk AM becomes available, it might be possible to put the manned section at the end of a 250,000 mile long tether with AM and engines at the other end (accelerating at .01 g). Even this separation may be insufficient.
@milesK12 I'm talking about atmospheric sheer. For instance the elevator must be constructed above the equator, where it is subject to hurricanes or typhoons (depending). In space it is subject to solar wind, solar flares, and the van Allen radiation belt, all of which operate to degrade the strength of the cable. The elevator will need a material that can cope with tensile forces equal to a span of over 3,000 miles at a full "g" AND have sheer strength at least 10% of its tensile strength.
@1DanConnors Dan it says it's not possible using todays technology because we currently do not have the industry/capacity to make a nono carbon fibre tether that is serveral miles long. That's the only real issue, the technology exists and the ability to produce that technology but to produce it in mass bulk does not but could exist easily. I know because I have read several studies in regards to it both written by nasa and independent.
@milesK12 Instead it could use planetoidal debris to create gigantic power plants in synchronous orbit--either solar powered or nuclear. This electrical power could be transformed into a microwave beam that would be aimed at square mile receivers on Earth--hundreds of them. Power plants of up to billions of kilowatts could be placed in synchronous orbit, allowing Earth to escape its dependence on fossile fuels--completely once we develope a workable electric powered car.
@1DanConnors The power plant idea is good, I like it but I also feel at the same time that the world is too immature to use orion. When the world is at peace maybe then men can trust men to do the right things.
@milesK12 We have a choice. Mature or not we can burst out into space, or we can do what the dolphins did--crawl back into the Earth mother's womb, the sea. If we decide to insure there is no poverty, oppression, injustice, or war before we colonize space, we will never do it. If we try to be everybody's friend, we will never do it. Space will be colonized by pioneer types, people who don't give a damn what other peoples' opinions of their efforts are. It's the universe or nothing for Man.
I agree however I can also see another flip side to this a missle silo in space in the hands of the wrong people is never a good thing. As for the sheer effect you can build the elevator on a floating platform out in the pacific which will ease the sheer effect somewhat, also consider that we have the 1st gen of nano tubes 100 times the tensile strength of steel I believe. I wonder how much stronger the 2 gen will be once the manufacturing process has been perfected.
@milesK12 As to the flip side the same could have applied to the Saturn 5, which sent men to Luna. Each ship put over 120 tons of payload into LEO. That 120 tons could have easily held 200 reentry MIRV's, each in the half megaton explosive range. The solution is to have Russian and Chinese crew members in each Orion--an international crew. Control would be achieved by way of the multikey, multicode system used in ICBM launches. A Russian, Chinese, and US crewman would have to act in concert.
@1DanConnors Half a gram is equiv to 1 Horishma sorry got the "European Organization Of Nuclear Research - Angel and Demons" web page and the wiki page on "antimatter weapons" mixed up.
@1DanConnors The point about the flip side is no matter how many keys you have or who has them there is allway's room for human error be that in war or the very systems that run the ships. Humans are prone to flaws, sometimes the flaws are silly and sometimes they are more serious.
@milesK12 The only absolute safety is beyond the grave. Risks can be minimized but not eliminated. If we wait for an absolutely safe intersteller transport we will never visit the stars. The crews of both the US and USSR ICBM silos never fired a weapon, either intentionally or accidently. The crews of our Trident ICBM submarines also have a perfect record. In the last 50 years over 2 million Americans have died in car crashes, but there is no serious discussion about banning automobiles.
@1DanConnors Well nothing is 100% safe and it's not that automobiles are unsafe it's the people who drive them. As for the trident I can't really comment on that, you say they say, they have a perfect safety record I wonder of the validility of that record. How many times has a disaster been averted but not documented?!? Unless I'm there serving on one I wouldn't know for sure.
@milesK12 None have been lost at sea or fired their ICBM's, either deliberately or accidently. Two US attack subs have been lost at sea (the Thresher and the Scorpion), but neither of these were carrying nuclear missiles. The Thresher sank in shallow water, so the cause of its sinking is well known. The Scorpion disappeared in deep ocean, and there is speculation it may have been sunk by a Russian sub. Of course there is also speculation we blew up Chernobyl after they destroyed the Challenger.
@1DanConnors i just think what we are told and what actually happens are two different things all together. Secret services wouldn't be very secret if they told us everything!!! It would kind of take the meaning secret out of service and then we would probably get invaded, so I wouldn't believe everything that is said. As for the elevator you maybe right but then again it's probably nothing that can't be solved by engineering and development as with most things.
@milesK12 Also many people have died in car crashes that were the fault of badly engineered and carelessly built vehicles. I owned one such car, a 1984 Chevy Celebrity. It had front wheel drive and was slung low in front (to make it look sexy). Any time there was any water on the road and I had to use my brakes I would totally lose control of the car--hydroplane. I called the US NTSB and was told nothing could be done about it. They advised me to put 150 lb. of cinder blocks over the rear axle.
1. i though they were ganne use a plasma rocket?
2. you wont hear anything of those nukes(no sound in space)
rubikfan1 2 weeks ago
Russian next generation spaceship
/watch?v=pbj6fG3xrJA
staritskii 1 month ago
Chuck Norris shot a bullet to Mars and it landed !
odomak1 1 month ago
Looks like my ship in Kerbal Space Program ;3
xSolidCake 1 month ago
i was expecting crazy nuke explosions :/
7L 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
They should just go ahead and do it, Nuclear propulsion ftw!
abvmoose87 1 month ago
i think this strange...orion paunchy....LOL
MrSigitsatrio 2 months ago
NEEDS MOAR BOOSTERS
dt890 2 months ago
only one thing...NO SOUND IN SPACE! lol
0FlyingSwede0 2 months ago
@0FlyingSwede0 Everybody fucking knows that, they add sounds because the video would be less entertaining if it was bland.
Also, you could get sound in space if you attached a microphone to the ship.
AgrivatedKillah 2 months ago
@0FlyingSwede0 Well it would be boring to watch then :/
GaminCro 2 months ago
It was per launch, but when the payload for a 10,000 ton launch is over 5,000 tons, you don't need many. They were also figuring on a ground ignition of the nuke bomb pusher plate. When ignition occurs above the atmosphere, as in this video, there is no fallout, no casualties, no reason not to proceed, except for a scrap of paper signed by a bunch of frightened old men in the 60's. They thought a piece of paper could keep them safe, when only mutual fear, and respect, could do that.
1DanConnors 2 months ago
In that quote, was Dyson talking about per launch, or the entire multi-launch series they wanted?
In any case, it's moot.
Far more useful to look at is the ten meter HLV boosted sectional ship, orbit assembled for use above the Van Allen belts.
JFrazer4303 2 months ago
I got the statistic from a BBC documentary made by the son of Project Orion's chief engineer. I note how you didn't disagree with my other comment, that JFK cancelled the project because he found it abhorrent and called it the "dooms day device". I won't write again so have a nice life Dan.
erichargrave12 3 months ago
@erichargrave12 I saw the documentary. Freeman Dyson said his original estimate was 1 to 10 deaths per launch, but he believed he could get the figure down to less than 1. The "doomsday device" was brought on by some stupid Air Force generals who thought they could get more money for the program if they showed Kennedy an Orion converted to an orbiting battleship. Bad idea. Have a nice life yourself, but don't believe ANYTHING you see or hear on TV or from the government, any government.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
In the animation, nuclear bombs are detonated behind a blast shield to propel the ship forward. This idea was first developed in 1950s, but cancelled by JFK because it would kill 1 in 100 humans for every launch and militarise space. He called it the doomsday device. This film depicts a bad idea that should be laid to rest.
erichargrave12 3 months ago
@erichargrave12 Make that figure 1 to 10 possible deaths per launch. The vehicle shown in the animation uses 18 shutle sized boosters per launch and produces 0 fallout. God, I love the way you guys fake numbers; I used to work for the government, and we faked them all the time. Reminds me of the faked numbers discovered and reported by the Russians at the latest "Global Warming" farce earlier this year. Turns out the Brits were faking Russian number to show Russ winters were getting warmer.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@erichargrave12 Do you really expect anyone with intelligence will believe your FAKED figure of 60 million dead (1 in 100) per Orion lauch? I imagine you will do what all people of your ilk do when caught in an obviously lie, namely crawl back into the woodwork and hide a bit. Or you will come in and edit your post to something like 1 to 100 dead per launch. You will hope that the majority of viewers will believe you always meant this. You won't get away with that; I'll be here to let them know.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
wouldnt this cause a nuclear fallout?
GoChokeOn1 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@GoChokeOn1 that is why they did not do it
radonas 4 months ago
@GoChokeOn1 As H.G. Wells said "It's the universe or nothing for Man." Clearly, a majority of US citizens have opted for nothing (bread and circuses, the creation of a gigantic artificial womb for us all whether we want it or not). My hope must be that some other country of men chooses the universe. Whatever this country, or power, is it will quickly become the dominant force on Earth. The US will fade into the obscurity it has chosen.
1DanConnors 4 months ago
Nuclear propulsion is best solution for Interplanetar Mothership. but never should be used for launch into orbit.- it is not safe.
PleasureTV 4 months ago
@PleasureTV
Step 1) Create space elevator, including tether and counter weight.
Step 2) Use the elevator to ferry material into space in order to build the mothership.
Step 3) Build mothership and ferry fuel or any kind decided upon up to the ship
Step 4) AWESOME SPACE ADVENTURE!!!
Seriously though, the space elevator is by far the best option, however requires a very durable and resilient material to allow the counter weight to pull the cable taught.
TheReasonWhyGuy 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy Assuming a space elevator is even technically feasible you would need the payload of several Orion launches to build it. You need at least 50,000 tons of material in 24 hour orbit. This would be the payload of 5,000 space shuttle sized chemical rockets. So, at best, you're putting the cart before the horse. The realistic procedure: Build 20,000 ton Orion. Fly it to 24 hour orbit 10 times delivering needed material. Use elevator to build a REALLY big Orion. Go anywhere in space.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy Of course those 10 Orion flights can also build a 50,000 ton factory in space that could use nearbye asteroidal material to construct a super Orion vehicle of any imaginable size. The elevator then becomes redundant except for possibly hauling up the literally millions of people who would be leaving Earth behind forever.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@1DanConnors The elevator is thousands of times cheaper to operate, and in turn, a single elevator can extend another elevator, and then those 2 can extend 2 more, and those 4 can extend 4 more... far more efficient than wasting 10 trips just to get a thing up there to make it so you can actually do shit up there.
Besides, you numbers sound very arbitrary, which makes me think you pulled it out of your ass.
Please put it back, it's starting to smell up the place...
TheReasonWhyGuy 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy You are talking about a construction that is almost 50,000 miles long (counting the counterweight extending above the 24 hour orbit. I believe 50,000 tons is a very small mass for such a project. By comparison 50,000 miles of railroad track would mass about 5 million tons. A space elevator is going to be subjected to far more stress than any railroad track, so the figure 50,000 tons is almost ludicrously low. And, since you have introduced pleasantries, do the math, genius.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@1DanConnors Hahaha, you use the idea of railroad track as a modern equivalent? XD
The proposed material, if you actually read up on it.
Is the incredibly light and strong, yet admit-ably expensive, carbon nanotubes.
Of coarse, your figure also ignored that the area with most needed tensile strength is at the geostationary orbit level, and required strength drops incredibly low as you reach sea level.
I'll say this, the elevator is tricky, but orion we could do today :)
TheReasonWhyGuy 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy Then we agree. If we can do it today (and we CAN) let's do it. The explosive force of the 1,000 mininukes needed to push a first generation Orion into space and on to Mars is less than a megaton. There were singular airbursts in the 50's and early 60's that released 20 to 50 times that energy (and fallout). Incidentally there is nothing old fashioned about a mag-lev train going 400 mph, but the track still runs about 100 tons a mile.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy I've been disgusted by lame comments on the disaster of an Orion crashing on Florida and sinking the whole state. The inherent risk of a disintegrating space elevator would be much more likely. The surface tether could be taken out by a single terrorrist in a piper cub. Higher altitude (and harder to repair) ruptures could be perpetrated by relatively cheap high power lasers or simple explosive missiles. On the whole the elevator's much more vulnerable than Orion to terrorrists.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@1DanConnors
...
Terrorists?
Too many things to address now, which won't fit into a youtube comment, please pm me if you actually want to talk about terrorism
TheReasonWhyGuy 3 months ago
@TheReasonWhyGuy My apologies, I didn't mean to drag terrorrists into the issue. It's just the 1st thing critics dredge up about Orion. Here, I must admit ignorance. I have no idea what you mean by "pm". Like you. I'm annoyed by YouTube's 100 word limit on comments--really not enough space to say anything. I have reread my material on the elevator, and it doesn't now seem that far in the future. But it still require a starting mass in 24 hour orbit of at least 50,000 tons.
1DanConnors 3 months ago
@1DanConnors "It's just the 1st thing critics dredge up about Orion"
I would be pretty annoyed about that too :)
Pm=personal message... you can go onto anybodies channel, and click the "send message" button
It really helps with technical discussions.
Also I want to get this out of the way, I support project orion :)
TheReasonWhyGuy 3 months ago
Kerbal Space Program.
ghostalin 5 months ago
aerodynamics fail - that thing will aim downwards and nuke the ksc
1Nekit1 5 months ago
an excellent use for our current nuclear stockpiles wherever they maybe
Fragem420 5 months ago
The americans should sell the technology to the chinese, they`ll build it
cadelaide 5 months ago
@cadelaide This is state of the art technology, they would fuck it up by a long shot.
AgrivatedKillah 2 months ago
@AgrivatedKillah State of the art...late 50's tech. But, you're right; today's generation probably would fuck it up.
1DanConnors 2 months ago
Por motivos escusos estamos ainda presos ao planeta Terra, poderiamos estar exploando o sistema solar...
MarceloJMata 6 months ago
Good job on this hombres ---Damn I'd like to see that thing take off from Jackass Flats!
1138thz 6 months ago
Yeah you wouldn't want to be sending humans in such a ship. EEk! Also those extend-able arms...one impact of a piece of comet or rock flying by and it would be bye bye arm and possibly bye bye orion project.
bluelotuspetals 7 months ago
@bluelotuspetals ...And so, a government elected by a populace, the majority of whom are utter morons, cancelled the most important step forward by Humanity in the last millenium.
1DanConnors 7 months ago
@1DanConnors there's more to follow in the stupid moron department and also thankfully in the genius inventor department. We'll get there and hopefully without destroying the human form we are clothed in. I believe there are safer alternatives to traveling through the dangerous (so called) realm of space without having to further stress our forms with nuclear pollution; I'm anti nuke and I'm willing to bet anyone exposed to this stuff will be as well.
bluelotuspetals 7 months ago
@bluelotuspetals Without nuclear power we're going nowhere in space, unless you think the 1.4 light second trip to our moon counts as space travel. I worked on top of 8 nuclear reactors while in the Navy (USS Enterprize) and never had any problem with it. If our ship had been nuke bombed--this was cold war era--all that would have been left of us would have been those 8 containment globes. Solar sails, ion beams, mass drivers--extremely low thrust/weight, useless. Chemical--the moon's the limit.
1DanConnors 7 months ago
@1DanConnors And that my friend is where thinking outside of the box comes in, so to speak. See cold fusion for one. And don't tell me it isn't existent.
bluelotuspetals 7 months ago
@bluelotuspetals I know there were a series of hoaxes back in the 90's claiming the invention of cold fusion devices. It's self evident they were hoaxes, or the world would now be shifting rapidly to their use. For nuclear power fusion to take place you need 4 things: great heat and pressure, containment, and time. Since you claim to be anti-nuke power in the first place I don't know why you bring it up. For Orion the logical next step would be the use of fusion pulses instead of fission bombs.
1DanConnors 7 months ago
@1DanConnors we'll soon see. :o)
bluelotuspetals 7 months ago
@bluelotuspetals The great thing about nuke pulse travel is that so much payload is available on a really big version (100 MTons) that shielding can be solid steel, yards thick, that not only completely protects against bomb blast radiation, but reduces cosmic ray exposure to less than it is on Earth. In other words the crew of a 2nd or 3rd generation Orion, starbound, would recieve less radiation than we do. What do you mean by comments page?
1DanConnors 7 months ago
@1DanConnors you can try this program to get Orion reinstated and see what happens.. space dot com 11990 dash darpa dash 100-year-starship-technology
bluelotuspetals 7 months ago
@bluelotuspetals With the current administration in the US, I wouldn't waste a second trying. Obama has already virtually shut down NASA, useless as it was. We are now paying Russia to bring our people to the space station. With the shutdown of the STS, inneficient as it was, the US no longer has the capability to even take men into low Earth orbit. We are now less capable of space travel than we were in the 1960's. The tree huggers have completely won; technological advance is defeated. Enjoy!!
1DanConnors 7 months ago
@1DanConnors You're totaly wrong. Obama increased NASA's budget. The US does have the ability to take people into low Orbit. If we had to we could do it tommarow, which would be wierd because we have them up there right now anyway. There were multiple points in the 60's when we couldn't get people into space. Now is like those, exept we have people in space.
Almost every envirmentalis I have ever talked to is pro NASA. NASA has been a part of the modern envirnmental movement from the start.
monokhem 6 months ago
@monokhem What US rocket are you going to use to put men into low earth orbit? Shuttle's retired, and if you wanted to reopen it you'd be lucky to use it again this year. In the early 60's a Gemini crew was supposed to dock with Agena payload. The Agena had problems-couldn't be used. NASA did a turn-around, and had another Gemini crew take off in only a few days. They linked up with the 1st crew in less than a week. THERE'S NO WAY WE COULD DO THAT TODAY. NASA in bed with enviroes has its costs.
1DanConnors 6 months ago
@monokhem One of them is that NASA can't even mention a nuclear space ship of any kind, solid core, gaseous core, nuke pulse (Orion). They are left with solar sails--one square mile of sail providing maybe a ton of thrust; solar powered ion rockets--ditto. Chem jobs with refueling stations at destination. Laser propelled ships (God help the crew if the beam is off by a millisecond of arc). None of this stuff is going to get us to Mars, let alone the stars. Enviroes are strangling space travel.
1DanConnors 6 months ago
@1DanConnors What do you think they are planning of powering VASIMR with? NASA has been researching this stuff for years. You just aren't paying attention and are comming up with paranoid thoeries to fill in the gaps.
monokhem 6 months ago
@monokhem I have read about VASIMIR. It's an ion engine without electrodes. The most powerful version on the drawing board creates 5 newtons of thrust from a 300 kilogram engine giving it a thrust/weight ratio of 1 to 660. In addition it requires large space radiators to remove waste heat. The expected max Isp is only 5,000. Even if powered by a nuclear reactor (not in design yet) it would have only a fraction of Orion's capabilities. Dyson wasn't paranoid; Orion WAS killed by politics.
1DanConnors 6 months ago
@1DanConnors That's research, And Orion wasn't killed because of politics. It was killed because it is stupid. I've got a great idea, lets have Fukashima all over the Uninted States! What if when we lost Challenger it took the entire state of Florida with it. Or like Columbia it came down all over the western half of the country?
We can't manage to keep the ocean out of one of our best cities, and you think we can make a nuclear powerplant fly safely?
monokhem 6 months ago
@monokhem If you're dumb enough to build a near ocean city below sea level (New Orleans) expect it to be flooded by any hurricane that comes near. What's really dumb is rebuilding it in the same location--still below sea level. Your fantasy of a crashing Orion taking out Florida is typical environmentalist propoganda. It shows you have no grasp of the physics of nuclear bombs. An accidental explosion of 1 bomb would vaporise the ship and all the remaining bombs; only 1 bomb at a time is armed.
1DanConnors 6 months ago
@1DanConnors You don't know anything about how or why cities are built. Ports are built at the mouths of rivers. That's just how it is. Read up on sea gates. Holding the ocean back is something we are much better at than nuclear power. You are the one pretending radiation doesn't exist and you want to act like I don't know anything about physics? You are the one with the fantasies.
monokhem 6 months ago
@monokhem I don't argue with name callers. You deliver 0 facts laced with heavy emotionalism, which is typical of environmentalists. In a public debate your usual tactic is to shout down anyone who disagrees with you. This is my final reply to you. Rant and rave as you wish.
1DanConnors 6 months ago
@1DanConnors I didn't call you any names, and you are the one who degraded the tone of the conversation by calling people names because they don't agree with you and labeling things you don't want to accept as fantasies. Apearantly you can't stand to take what you are all to eager to emotionaly dish out.
Everyone is an envirnmentalis to some degree. Most of the people I know that call themselves evironmentalists don't think I'm one because i like nuclear power and don't want VET testing.
monokhem 6 months ago
Thank god, they never realise this project. Imagine what happen, if the ship explose during take off.
mastereder3000 7 months ago
Its too bad this never panned out.
Nuking ourselves through space. What a sexy way to travel.
SolRosenberg84 8 months ago 5
@asdfghjkl48402 True; the sun fuses 400 million tons of hydrogen a second just to keep us warm. That's the equivalent of about 60 million 100 megaton H-bombs every second. Fortunately, no human legislature can pass a law ordering it to stop,
1DanConnors 8 months ago 3
@Zerghumper Alpa and Beta radiation are only harmful if the objects emitting them are inhaled or swallowed. Gamma radiation is bad, but the neutron flux produced by a nuclear bomb burst or a melting nuclear reactor is lethal. Fortunately this neutron flux is extremely limited in range (less than a mile), and the neutrons have a very short half life (under a minute).
1DanConnors 8 months ago
I love that you did this video. It's awesome. Thanks so much for visualising it.
MrTejlgaard 9 months ago
Yeah this video shows the boosters burning out well below the cloud line. Are you going to blast your way all the way out of Earths atmosphere? That seems terribly inefficient. Especially while sill withing Earth's gravity.
Enatbyte 9 months ago
@Enatbyte Burnout velocity at shutdown approximately 6,000 feet per second. Top of solid fuelled boosters' flight path over 50 miles high. Nuke bomb pulse begins above 99 percent of the atmosphere. There is NO fallout. There is NO radiation release to the ecosphere. We should save Humanity in spite of itself!!!
1DanConnors 9 months ago
Lighten up bonehead I WAS KIDDING.
Pandoranage4101 9 months ago
@Pandoranage4101 It's not really a subject to joke about. I've read way too many idiotic comments in this "debate" by people who thought they knew better than the team of nuclear physicists who came up with the idea. If you want a topic to laugh--or cry--about, take the current state of the US government.
1DanConnors 9 months ago 2
@Pandoranage4101
Your statement shows how little most know about radioactive fallout. The use of nuclear explosions in space, especially out past the Van Allen belts would be completely harmless to us here on earth (think about the sun's radiation) , and in the vastness of space, it would be the equivalent of a spec of pepper dropped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.Turning space radioactive would be about as successful as trying to turn the Ocean yellow by having someone piss in it.
Zerghumper 9 months ago 2
@Zerghumper You think that's bad...most of the american population doesn't realize (they slept in school) that Alpha and Beta particles are EASY to deal with. Gamma is a killer...but only for a given moment or given materials. hmmph.
GrigoriZhukov 8 months ago
Comment removed
1DanConnors 8 months ago
Sweet graphics though.
Pandoranage4101 9 months ago
It took a team of phyicists six years to figure out nuclear warheads were not a viable propulsion source in the inner solar system? Come on, they figured that shit out the first three hours. "Hey Bert..." "What?" "You know this shit will leave radioactive dust from Earth to the moon to Mars and it's going to drift everywhere." ..."Yeah but don't tell anybody till we've had a few years to play with it. These government salaries beat the heck out of MIT."
Pandoranage4101 9 months ago
@Pandoranage4101 That team of physicists found nothing of the sort. What they did discover was that a great step forward for Humanity could be derailed by politics.
1DanConnors 9 months ago
@Pandoranage4101 The really unfortunate thing is that people with your mentality have just as much influence over what we're going to do--or not do in space as those of us who actually know what we're talking about.
1DanConnors 9 months ago
It would fly apart after the first explosion
Marathonmarch 9 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Vertical take-off was always a terrible idea. It was the idea NASA went with to keep the defence force investors happy. Foolish waste of the world's time.
Lightflightpilot 10 months ago
Vertical take-off was always a terrible idea. It was the idea NASA went with to keep th edefence force investors happy. Foolish waste of the world's time.
Lightflightpilot 10 months ago
@Lightflightpilot As opposed to...what? You need to go UP to get into space. How are you supposed to get there--horizontally?? The idea of a 10,000 ton, nuclear bomb powered rocket taking off like a plane is wierd. How big a wing do you think you'd need? How many nuke bomb pulses before the wing fell off? A large C-5 size plane dropping a 200 ton rocket from 5 miles up might get 5 tons to orbit. 1500 flights would deliver the same payload as one Orion.
1DanConnors 10 months ago
Not very plausible to use explosives to slow the decent... But otherwise, nice work!
TheAwesomeFormat 11 months ago
@TheAwesomeFormat Explosive down to 1,000 feet, followed by auxiliary chems to surface.
1DanConnors 10 months ago
what are the unrealistically long extendable arms for?
bertazoid 11 months ago
@bertazoid
The long arms are to prevent a disorienting Coriolis effect (in which falling objects seem to be deflected sideways) from rotational pseudo-gravity by creating a larger spin radius. Or at least that seems to be the most plausible explanation anyway, correct me if I'm wrong.
QuantumPhenomena 11 months ago
@QuantumPhenomena You're correct. A spin diameter of roughly 1600 ft. provides an artificial "gravity" by rotating twice a minute. Getting the same by just rotating the 160 ft. wide ship would require spinning it at over 10 rpm, which would leave everyone on board dizzy and nauseated..
1DanConnors 11 months ago
@bertazoid they are for generating artificial gravity, a neccesity for deep space manned travel. they are really really long because at larger radius/spin you dont get dizzy from the spinning becuz the spacecraft would rotate a lot more slowly to generate the artificial gravity force.
serpentphoenix 10 months ago
so called "democracy" and so called "free market" prohibit such projects from life. period. thats why science suck big time in current situation, not only space exploration.
phono1231 11 months ago
I still think you don't quite realise how big a super orion is this is a quote taken from wiki - "super" Orion design; at 8 million tons, it could easily be a city. Go look up project orion on wiki, I watched a fil about it and one thing that JFK was affraid of was nuclear weapons in space and a nuclear arms race for nukes in space.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 By the way I'm not even an American, I'm British and live in England.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 A super orion is the same size as the mother spaceship out of Alien. If you wanted to compare a super orion to a trident go to a beach and look left and look right along the sea length then look at the massive cargo ship which is several miles out, the cargo ship is the trident the rest of the sea is Orion. Then you begin to realise what you are dealing with here.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 The reason i am so intrested in Orion is because one night I was thinking of ways we could reach other worlds then I thought of the most powerful thing which man currently has, which obviously is the atomic bomb. I then had an idea about using bombs to power a ship I typed "riding an explosion" and all manner of things into the internet to see if it had already been done which led me to the orion project.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 I don't think you read my posts very carefully. I said my "guestimate" of the first intersteller Orion would be in the range of 1E8 to 1E9 tons. That means 100 million tons to 1 billion tons, with a final arrival at destination payload of one to five million tons. It won't be a fission pulse, but a fusion pulse engine. It wouldn't have to be all in one vehicle, but would probably be divided up into 4 to 10 ships of 25E6 to 1E8 tons each. Early model Orions would be far smaller.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@milesK12 The one portrayed in this film masses 10,000 tons, not counting the strap on solid fuel boosters used to lift it clear of atmosphere before it begins to fire its nukes. I became interested in Orion while it was actually being built, and I think the worst mistake the United States ever made was to cancel it. It was cancelled because of politics and fear, and our world today is much smaller, poorer. and limited than it would have been otherwise. I hope we will grow up and build it.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@milesK12 We won't have true space travel until we have a ship this capable. Orion will actually improve the odds of Human survival by enabling the construction of artificial worldlets from debris in the asteroid belt, minor moons, and the Oort cloud. Potential enclosed areas equal to thousands of times the area of
earth could be built. Humanity would survive a nuke war on Earth, as most of it would no longer live here.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
I wish we could build one and send it to the Gliese Star System, to G581g. we could get there in 200 years if we sent built and launched an interstellar- pulsed fusion orion by next year. Sadly, this may never happen =(
phoenixaltar 1 year ago
I've got an even better generalization of the re-imagining of Project Orion; intead of turing around the Orion spacecraft to land on Mars, bring a space-elevator cable with you to drop down to the Mars surface!
oker59 1 year ago
Everytime I hear about this project, I always wonder about the force on the crew and ship during acceleration. This was the first time I noticed the shock absorbers attached to the inertial plate. Though they'd rob the acceleration, I guess they'd be necessary, and we could spare the virtually weightless "fuel." Still, the crew's basically gonna be getting rear-ended repeatedly. Anyone have more info. on this aspect?
question444 1 year ago
@question444 For the earlier, smaller (10,000 tons) version it will be rough. When truly large (1,000,000 tons or larger) versions are built, they will be built with multiple engines. A ship with 16 engines, with 2 opposing engines firing 8 times a second, would smooth out the thrust to almost normal. Such a ship would have to be built in space. It would then have the advantage that overall accelleration could be less than 1 gravity.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@question444 actually the g-force is highly tolerable, designed to be 2-4g's to be exact...there are shock plates on ass end of craft to absorb the force.
trufiend138 1 year ago
This thing is crazy but it is always the craziest ideas that are the most likely to work.
Not sure how we'll get out of the atmosphere without making ourselves glow if we're not allowed to launch from Antarctica, though.
ThePingasMightier 1 year ago
@ThePingasMightier Are you talking about the Van Allen radiation belts? The Apollo Moon shots went right through the middle of them with no harm to the crews. The shielding required for reentry to Earth minimized exposure. Orion would carry far heavier shielding to protect the crew from radiation from nuclear bombs detonating only a few hundred feet away.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@StevPhillpis - Thanks for the post. I read about the Orion like in '63 or '64 in something called the SRA reader that declared we were close to a grand tour of the planets though they didn't use the term grand tour. I thought it was fiction. When I finally got to read Dyson's book on it, wow what a big vision. They were using slide-rulers at the time. I still think it is a great idea.
eotto2001 1 year ago
I'll do the usual youtube meaningless comment and say: GO ORION!
Let's hope the environmentalists pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that this would actually help the ecosystem: if we can produce energy in orbit and get raw materials from the asteroids, we can shut down a lot of pollution-producing sites on the home planet.
PaladinAndrei 1 year ago
And you're going to get around the functional destruction of every piece of electronic equipment within thousands of miles on the ground how, exactly? In 1957 it might not have mattered all that much. Even in 63. In 2010, you've spelled the death of the society electronic.
aiwahead 1 year ago
@aiwahead A mid pacific lauch minimizes EMP. That and the fact that the propulsive bombs are very low in power compared to the gigantic midair blasts of the 50's and 60's. Total explosive force of all the bombs used in an Orion launch is less than one megaton, compared to 10-20 megatons (average) for a single 50's or 60's air burst. The largest bomb used in an Orion launch is only 20 kilotons, one fiftieth of a megaton. EMP should be negligible.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@aiwahead Orion was legislated out of existence for similar ridiculous objections. If we really want to do away with all things harmful to our precious electronics society why don't we pass legislation doing away with solar flares and sunspot activity. Together these two natural phenomena do much more to disrupt electronics than all the nuclear bombs ever exploded. No guts; no glory.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Then it's agreed! No more Solar Flares nor Sunspots! Meeting adjourned. Thank goodness my pong game will be safe....
Me thinks the kids watch too many science friction movies, several have made it appear that any nuclear bomb detonated in the atmosphere would create a worldwide EMP pulse strong enough to knock out their precious Ipods and gonad warmers..
BadSmaxx 1 year ago
Orion drives are great but unfortunately much of the nuclear energy gets wasted so I say Daedalus and VASIMR are more preferable.
RazaTheHacker 1 year ago
@RazaTheHacker The bigger the Orion vehicle is the less explosive energy is wasted. For intersteller flights lasting decades to centuries, we'd be looking at a vehicle massing roughly 1E9 tons with an Isp of 2E6 (20,000 KM per second). The really attractive thing about Orion is, we could start building this intersteller vehicle today.
1DanConnors 1 year ago 2
@1DanConnors True but still there is always room for improvement in our drive systems.
RazaTheHacker 1 year ago
@RazaTheHacker Only a fool would disagree.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Yep!!!
RazaTheHacker 1 year ago
Hi, can anyone tell me what the 3 extendable arms are for? solar panels?
and also, is this possible? why has it not been done? what problems arose, what caused them to give up
Makkerz 1 year ago
@Makkerz The extending modules rotate to provide an artificial "'gravity" for the crew during the coast period. Fully open they are about 500 meters across. Rotating twice per minute they provide a centrifugal force of about one g. This eliminates muscle loss and other types of damage to the crew. Orion was cancelled for political reasons; it WOULD have worked.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors cool, thank you
Makkerz 1 year ago
We could've built a permament moonbase with 1958 technology.
Szgerle 1 year ago
The only part I don't like is that these things are viewed as ships. In reality I think they'll be used as space tugs, moving multiple crafts around.
MikDonsen 1 year ago
@MikDonsen More than 10,000 tons, over 130 feet wide, carrying a crew of 100 or more--why shouldn't they be called ships? Space ships in fact.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
I've thought a lot about space propulsion and, personally, I do not like the idea. You waste most of your energy out the sides. More importantly, it isn't easy to keep cool when your floating in a thermos.
jag9998 1 year ago
@jag9998 well, Orion is probably the only propulsion method that can (theoretically) deliver such performance without needing any dedicated radiator for the engine or the power plant powering the engine.
That's because most of the energy isn't contained by walls. Sure it is wasteful, but your car ain't more efficient either.
bobafetthotmail 1 year ago
How does it get back?
Iamthenoi 1 year ago
@Iamthenoi Same way it got there--a series of propulsive nuclear shaped charges. When you're using nukes for fuel one small (200-300 pounds) bomb has the energy of a thousand TONS of normal chemical fuel.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@Iamthenoi A good question. I hope it has enough rockets to lift up enough to start launching nukes again. From that second onwards, it's trivial.
bobafetthotmail 1 year ago
@bobafetthotmail Wasteful with nuclear bombs for propulsion means a low end Isp of 10,000, which is better than the most optimistic performance expected with an ion engine. Ion engines are lucky if they can produce a thrust of .001 gravities. Orion produces 2 or 3 g's with ease. In its most efficient (largest) model it can produce an Isp of 2,000,000 driving a ship to 10% of speed of light. This is the only known system capable of manned intesteller flight.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors And with Cold War tech, no less. I think there must be more problems than initially foreseen, noone ever tried the concept beyond that thingy with conventional explosives. And since you cannot test nukes in the open or in space.... we will probably never know.
bobafetthotmail 1 year ago
@bobafetthotmail Werner von Braun, developer of the Saturn 5 which took us to the moon, became an instant convert when he saw the demo tapes of the initial Orion tests. Orion wasn't killed by technical problems; it was scrapped because of a scrap of paper--the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty, which has been a complete failure. Nations as backwards as India and North Korea now have nukes. The next great advance in Human history was stopped by politics. It's time for that treaty to go away.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors It never went past conceptual stage. Anything getting past conceptual stage will slam on walls noone thought were there.
India isn't anywhere near backwards, although north korea is.
For that treaty to go away we would need to undo fifty years of nuclear fear, fuelled by uneducated idiots like Greenpeace.
bobafetthotmail 1 year ago
@bobafetthotmail A truly daunting task. My belief is that it will be far harder to re-educate the people of the world to see reality, drop their superstitious dread of nuclear power, and begin really remaking the world than it will be to actually build Orion. My parents' generation, with its quaint enthusiasm went from zero to the moon in less than 10 years. Hard to believe, but they also defeated Hitler and his buddies.
1DanConnors 1 year ago 2
@1DanConnors That is one thing that scares me in this over Politically Correct society we have turned into. If a Hitler were to rise to power with global ambitions today, just how would we handle it? There would be too much bloodshed for this pc world to even fathom. In our last few "wars" the American casualties in all three wars combined did not approach that of a single day in WWI or WWII and yet it would seem once we hit that 1000 dead mark 65% of the population cry it is time to withdraw
BadSmaxx 1 year ago
@BadSmaxx Hope you're not counting Vietnam as one of the last 3 wars, because we did lose 58,000 kia there. As for the action in Iraq I think the main problem is we didn't withdraw the army when the actual war was over. We used it to try to turn Iraq into a democracy and a friend--which isn't going to happen. We should have just kicked their butts and left. And I wouldn't give a damn what happened to their two bit country afterwards. I agree the magic number does seem to be 1,000.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Absolutely not counting Vietnam. Gulf War I and II and Afghanistan. Even in the first Gulf War people were extremely squeamish about the thought of a soldier dying. And the media's slant on the war often baffles me, I totally agree with the withdrawal on Iraq war II we should have left much earlier! However in the first Iraq war we should have either stayed another month or not made the promises we did.
BadSmaxx 1 year ago
@BadSmaxx Both gulf wars were about oil, which this country can't do without. Oil is a good reason to go to war, and, in fact, it's what finally got us into World War 2. The Japanese wanted the oil in the west indies, and we didn't want them to have it. They were going to use it to expand their already large empire. When Japan saw that we weren't going to allow them to get the oil, that's when they decided to attack us.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors If they built an Orion surely oil wouldn't be a problem they'd be able to harvest it from Titan as easy as harvesting water on earth the only issue is logisitics, I'm not saying they should do it as we need to move away from using too much oil anyway and simply turning planet earth into another titan by polluting the crap out of it isn't the awnser I'm affraid earth's the only planet we know of which is 100% compatible for humans but orion could change that.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 Why would oil be a problem at all? If you're talking about the oil sprayed on the pusher plate to keep it cool, that amounts to less than 1,000 barrels per shot. American cars go through 10,000,000 barrels a day using 1,000 barrels every 9 seconds. Assuming 10 Orion launches a year (delivering 60,000 tons of payload to LEO or 40,000 tons to escape velocity) that's 10,000 tons--one tenth of one percent of what our cars use in a day. I see no problem.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors The comment was in regards to both Gulf wars. Why go to war at all for oil when there is a planet which practically rains oil. Plus you would not use the orion module to land and take off from earth only as a delivery system you would use the space elevator as the delivery system to and from orion. As for 60,000 tons have you read the theoretical size of the super orion I think it could be adapted to haul just a tad more than 60,000 tons somehow.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 As of today total consumption of oil worldwide is around 5 million tons a day, almost 2 billion tons a year. Orions--even multimillion ton Orions aren't going to make a dent in that figure. Space elevators require material with a tensile strength not attainable in the near future. Oil, unfortunately, is a reason for us to go to war, mostly through the efforts of the Sierra club, greenpeace, etc., who have assured that domestic consumption exceeds production.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Dude why are we even talking about oil, hydrogen from the moon is a more worthy fuel but since oil is the topic of discussion here how come oil is currently transported world wide by oil tankers, please explain to me the difference between a GIGANTIC (and I can't stress this enough!) space tanker and a sea fairing tanker? If you can give me a sensible answer that doesn't involve trying to bombard me with useless stats then I won't dismiss your argument?
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 The only valid point I can see that supports you supply and demand issue is the distance from titan to earth by orion and the distance from oil well to land by tanker but I believed I already mention a case for mutiple orions and these things will make an oil tanker look diddy in comparison plus it's easier and safer to collect from Titan surface rather than drilling along our ocean floors.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 You won't be able to lower oil from Titan by way of a space elevator; the materials don't exist to build one. 200 super Orions each carrying 10 million tons of oil would have a highly detrimental effect on the atmosphere (not to mention the land) wherever they land. A 15 million ton Orion would need about 150 megatons of explosive force to go from LEO to land. 200 such vehicles a year would need the equivalent of 30 gigatons of nuke explosives. That's more than all the nukes on Earth.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors By comparison 250,000 ton tankers, each hauling over 100,000 tons of oil, travel at a relatively slow speed, around 10 knots. They are very energy efficient and relatively harmless to the ecosphere. Using about 10,000 tons of oil to haul 100KTons, 100 of them would burn a megaton of oil to deliver 10 megatons. A 15 MTon Orion would need the equivalent of 1,000 150kiloton nuke bombs to deorbit and land. 200 such landings would need 200,000 150 kiloton nuclear bombs. That's too much.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors 15million tons is the limit for a super Orion landing on Earth. That's because of the cube root squared law, which shows that engines must grow far larger (in proportion to vehicle size) than the vehicle's overall dimensions. A 15 MTon Orion would require almost half a square mile of engines just to take off. No possible combination of chem rockets could lift such a beast clear of atmosphere, so you'd be firing the equivalent of a 150 KTon bomb every second at sea level.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors In free space far larger ships would be possible, because you don't need a full "g" to accelerate. My guestimate for a manned intersteller vehicle is from 1E8 to 1E9 tons, with a deccelerated payload at destination of one million to 5 million tons and a transit time equal to 10 times the distance in light years.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors You’re actually wrong the materials do exist to build one they are called carbon nano tubes they are the materials which make up the tether. The problem is not the materials but the manufacturing process to make enough of them at present it costs too much to make a tether which will reach from land to space then all you need is a counterweight to keep the tether taught like a space station or an asteroid. The technology already exists, the money and will to make it however does not.
milesK12 1 year ago
@1DanConnors As for the Orion itself, there is no need for an Orion to ever land or take off from a planet it would simply drop a different tether down to the Titans surface and pull up the mining machine. There is no need for an orion to ever launch from earth. With an elevator it could be built in space. All these things are feasible. Like I said it's not a question of the technology not existing it's a case of money, manufacturing and the will to get off our backsides and just do it.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 But as well all know human are lazy creatures. Rich men don't care about the future of the human race they care more about dollar signs, digital bank figures, sluts and keeping everything as it is. They say slave labour has been abolished. I say bullshit, otherwise we'd all be living a life where money doesn't exist, robots do pretty much everything and we do things because we want to and not because we have to, to survive.
milesK12 1 year ago
@1DanConnors (By comparison 250,000 ton tankers....) This is all completely irrelevant and there is no need to ever launch or land an Orion that would be insane as well as difficult because of the nuclear proliferation treaty between the US and Russia. You need to read up more about the space elevator and stop seeing Orion as the whole picture it's only 1 piece of a much bigger picture. The space elevator is a reality and not just a piece of science fiction.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 Not wanting to rain on your parade, but the space elevator is NOT a reality. Every study I've looked at on the internet admits the elevator is not possible with today's technology. By comparison we could start work on an operational Orion today. Orion does not have to physically lower gigatons of oil to be very helpful for Earth's energy needs; it also doesn't have to go to Titan and suck oil out of its atmosphere (if that's what's in Titan's atmosphere).
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Dan it says it's not possible using todays technology because we currently do not have the industry/capacity to make a nono carbon fibre tether that is serveral miles long. That's the only real issue, the technology exists and the ability to produce that technology but to produce it in mass bulk does not but could exist easily. I know because I have read several studies in regards to it both written by nasa and independent.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 We also have produced antimatter (in extremely small batches), but not in any forseeable future are we going to be able to use it as fuel in an intersteller space ship. It's just too incredibly dangerous to have a fuel tank with a megaton of antimatter anywhere near a crew. These carbon nanotubes may have the tensile strength to do the job, but I don't believe they have the sheer strength to cope with forces operating 90 degrees from their tensile direction.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Yeah something like 1gram of antimatter is produced every year which is enough to run a light bulb or something. I remember reading up about it somewhere. I think it was the BBC's space page on alternative space vehicles.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 A gram of antimatter will explode with the force of 8,000 tons of TNT. A million tons exploding after magnetic container failure will (briefly) outshine the sun. That's why antimatter will never be used as fuel for a spaceship. If the space elevator IS perfected and bulk AM becomes available, it might be possible to put the manned section at the end of a 250,000 mile long tether with AM and engines at the other end (accelerating at .01 g). Even this separation may be insufficient.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@milesK12 I'm talking about atmospheric sheer. For instance the elevator must be constructed above the equator, where it is subject to hurricanes or typhoons (depending). In space it is subject to solar wind, solar flares, and the van Allen radiation belt, all of which operate to degrade the strength of the cable. The elevator will need a material that can cope with tensile forces equal to a span of over 3,000 miles at a full "g" AND have sheer strength at least 10% of its tensile strength.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
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@1DanConnors Dan it says it's not possible using todays technology because we currently do not have the industry/capacity to make a nono carbon fibre tether that is serveral miles long. That's the only real issue, the technology exists and the ability to produce that technology but to produce it in mass bulk does not but could exist easily. I know because I have read several studies in regards to it both written by nasa and independent.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 Instead it could use planetoidal debris to create gigantic power plants in synchronous orbit--either solar powered or nuclear. This electrical power could be transformed into a microwave beam that would be aimed at square mile receivers on Earth--hundreds of them. Power plants of up to billions of kilowatts could be placed in synchronous orbit, allowing Earth to escape its dependence on fossile fuels--completely once we develope a workable electric powered car.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors The power plant idea is good, I like it but I also feel at the same time that the world is too immature to use orion. When the world is at peace maybe then men can trust men to do the right things.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 We have a choice. Mature or not we can burst out into space, or we can do what the dolphins did--crawl back into the Earth mother's womb, the sea. If we decide to insure there is no poverty, oppression, injustice, or war before we colonize space, we will never do it. If we try to be everybody's friend, we will never do it. Space will be colonized by pioneer types, people who don't give a damn what other peoples' opinions of their efforts are. It's the universe or nothing for Man.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
I agree however I can also see another flip side to this a missle silo in space in the hands of the wrong people is never a good thing. As for the sheer effect you can build the elevator on a floating platform out in the pacific which will ease the sheer effect somewhat, also consider that we have the 1st gen of nano tubes 100 times the tensile strength of steel I believe. I wonder how much stronger the 2 gen will be once the manufacturing process has been perfected.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 As to the flip side the same could have applied to the Saturn 5, which sent men to Luna. Each ship put over 120 tons of payload into LEO. That 120 tons could have easily held 200 reentry MIRV's, each in the half megaton explosive range. The solution is to have Russian and Chinese crew members in each Orion--an international crew. Control would be achieved by way of the multikey, multicode system used in ICBM launches. A Russian, Chinese, and US crewman would have to act in concert.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Half a gram is equiv to 1 Horishma sorry got the "European Organization Of Nuclear Research - Angel and Demons" web page and the wiki page on "antimatter weapons" mixed up.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 Heh been a long time since I've read them.
milesK12 1 year ago
@1DanConnors The point about the flip side is no matter how many keys you have or who has them there is allway's room for human error be that in war or the very systems that run the ships. Humans are prone to flaws, sometimes the flaws are silly and sometimes they are more serious.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 The only absolute safety is beyond the grave. Risks can be minimized but not eliminated. If we wait for an absolutely safe intersteller transport we will never visit the stars. The crews of both the US and USSR ICBM silos never fired a weapon, either intentionally or accidently. The crews of our Trident ICBM submarines also have a perfect record. In the last 50 years over 2 million Americans have died in car crashes, but there is no serious discussion about banning automobiles.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors Well nothing is 100% safe and it's not that automobiles are unsafe it's the people who drive them. As for the trident I can't really comment on that, you say they say, they have a perfect safety record I wonder of the validility of that record. How many times has a disaster been averted but not documented?!? Unless I'm there serving on one I wouldn't know for sure.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 None have been lost at sea or fired their ICBM's, either deliberately or accidently. Two US attack subs have been lost at sea (the Thresher and the Scorpion), but neither of these were carrying nuclear missiles. The Thresher sank in shallow water, so the cause of its sinking is well known. The Scorpion disappeared in deep ocean, and there is speculation it may have been sunk by a Russian sub. Of course there is also speculation we blew up Chernobyl after they destroyed the Challenger.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors i just think what we are told and what actually happens are two different things all together. Secret services wouldn't be very secret if they told us everything!!! It would kind of take the meaning secret out of service and then we would probably get invaded, so I wouldn't believe everything that is said. As for the elevator you maybe right but then again it's probably nothing that can't be solved by engineering and development as with most things.
milesK12 1 year ago
@milesK12 Also many people have died in car crashes that were the fault of badly engineered and carelessly built vehicles. I owned one such car, a 1984 Chevy Celebrity. It had front wheel drive and was slung low in front (to make it look sexy). Any time there was any water on the road and I had to use my brakes I would totally lose control of the car--hydroplane. I called the US NTSB and was told nothing could be done about it. They advised me to put 150 lb. of cinder blocks over the rear axle.
1DanConnors 1 year ago
@1DanConnors We just had a bout of snow over christmas and I was told to do the same thing by a friend,
milesK12 1 year ago