I've seen others here mention nuclear rockets before, but I've never seen this project. How on earth (no pun intended) did we abandon this??
Nuclear Rocket Propulsion
- Thread starter mrkun
- Start date
NikolaeVarius
Lifer
- Oct 25, 2006
- 11,036
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Because it's powered via exploding nuclear bombs. Sure it can lift a sh!tload but exploding nuclear bombs to get out of our atmosphere is horrible for the environment.
They also came up with a much better version.
They also came up with a much better version.
There are other much more useful and less dangerous nuclear propelled rockets than Orion. Currently we don't need to lift entire cities into space so the large mass Orion lifts simply isn't needed. Something like a closed cycle gas core nuclear rocket would be much more suitable for our needs.
And you'd be happy to sit in the fallout from such a launch would you? This isn't some theoretical worry like a plant meltdown - more and more unlikely as technology advances - but actual atmospheric nuclear explosions over *your* head.
There is a treaty forbidding nuclear weapons in space. I'm not sure how this counts as a weapon anyway, but meh.
"The Orion Project is the best use of nuclear weapons I can think of, provided the ships don't depart from very near the Earth." - Carl Sagan
"The Orion Project is the best use of nuclear weapons I can think of, provided the ships don't depart from very near the Earth." - Carl Sagan
Aaaah, no. The plan was to start firing the nuclear weapons when the ship is very far from Earth.
f4phantom2500
Platinum Member
- Dec 3, 2006
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yeah that has always been my take on it. i mean do you really think scientists in the 60's would have come up with the idea of using nukes to launch a ship out of our atmosphere? why would they do that when they could already launch rockets into space by more conventional means?
Is there anything else on the drawing board that can get a decently sized payload to Pluto and back in a year? That alone seems pretty darned astonishing to me even if it couldn't carry such a huge payload.
dennilfloss
Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
I remember those projects when I was young, just not by their name. People were very open-minded at the time, ready to try weird stuff.
Yeah, I am all for new sources of energy that will move us into the next stage of civilization.
Hippies are like lobbyists who keep goodness like this from happening no matter how safe it is.
They hear the word nuclear and try to find any minute risk of the technology and blow it out of proportion by saying it will be the end of the universe if we meddle with it.
"But the main unsolved problem for a launch from the surface of the Earth is nuclear fallout. Freeman Dyson, group leader on the project, estimated back in the '60s that with conventional nuclear weapons, each launch would cause fatal cancers in ten human beings from the fallout (note that this estimate is disputed?see radiation hormesis). The United States Government concurred and decided that because of the danger to human life and the danger to electronic systems on the ground (from electromagnetic pulse) to shelve the project."
This is why we abandoned it.
Ignorance of what? Are you thinking that despite what the Wikipedia article and what people are posting in this thread, it wouldn't be used in the atmosphere?? :roll:
I would tend to agree with your statement but not in this case. Detonating nuclear weapons in our upper atmosphere just isn't a good idea. There are many practical nuclear rockets like NERVA, GCRs, VASIMR, etc. but Project Orion is overkill and has way too many negative side-effects.
Building it in space wouldn't be the best idea either. Not only is it expensive as hell just to launch the material into space (~$3000/lb x at least 1000 tons) but it is still pretty dangerous because if one of the rockets carrying the materials blows up, there will be a decent amount of nuclear material added to our atmosphere.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
- 64,795
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i remember some bbc documentary on it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/mars-a-bomb.shtml
it was kewl, they showed archive footage of small scale tests with conventional explosives, you see slow motion of a large dome like thing rise up in the air with successive explosions.
it was canceled cuz well.. fall out aint kewl. but with that idea they coudl theoretically lift truely massive vehicles into space. practically the heavier the better...like a cruiseliner, weight be damned.
it was kewl, they showed archive footage of small scale tests with conventional explosives, you see slow motion of a large dome like thing rise up in the air with successive explosions.
it was canceled cuz well.. fall out aint kewl. but with that idea they coudl theoretically lift truely massive vehicles into space. practically the heavier the better...like a cruiseliner, weight be damned.
I would rather have it the USA do it than let's say... China or a private company on some island.
We are already behind in the Global economy. We need this to help us continue on as the leader in technological pioneering.
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