Posted on 04/30/2005 3:48:34 PM PDT by MRMEAN
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Revisiting Project Orion
by Sam Dinkin
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Dyson claimed that the cancellation of Orion was “the first time in modern history that a major expansion of human technology has been suppressed for political reasons.” |
This is a late ’50s design that has actually had its economics improve over time. The weight of 800 nuclear bombs has gone way down. For the eight terajoule (two kiloton) explosions required for the 4500-ton version that can carry 20 people to the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn in the same trip, instead of the 900 tons of nuclear bombs at almost one ton each, there would need to be probably only 50 tons’ worth of bombs since artillery shells were subsequently developed that weighed much, much, less than what could be conceived in the late ’50s. Furthermore, an artillery shell is what is needed because the bomb is going to be shot out the bottom of the Orion ship at intervals as short as one-fourth of a second at first.
Shock absorbers have also come a long way since the 1950s. To protect the people from the huge kick of a blast, Orion envisioned huge shock absorbers designed to absorb the impulse of the 1000-ton pusher plate with the entire rest of the ship. Other versions looked at further absorption just in the crew area. My recommendation would be to put the crew on a long electromagnetic track. They could potentially be the only part of the ship that is isolated from the high-g shocks. By having a very small mass isolated from the pusher shocks, the mass of the shock absorbers could be reduced from 900 tons to something more manageable. Additional mass would need to be used to strengthen the components that would not have been exposed to high-g shocks in the old design, but I think a substantial improvement in the mass fraction devoted to shock absorption should be able to be achieved.
Cabin design, mass economization, and recycling have also been improved quite a bit in the last 50 years. That should allow us to launch more people for the same gross weight. Personally, I think it would be sexier and more popular in Japan to launch the Battleship Yamato. Or perhaps a 20,000-ton Ohio-class nuclear submarine should be delivered to the oceans of Europa.
As the engineering gets better and better the bigger you get, why was this cheap, effective technology stillborn? Not the engineering.
Is it possible that politics have evolved sufficiently to come full circle? Would Queen Isabella have quibbled about crew and onshore subjects dying in order to launch three ships to the New World?
Bush has got NERVA, but is that enough? |
President Bush in his first term has been successively undoing many of the treaties, policies, and laws written in the last 50 years. Working backwards from negotiation dates, Bush Rejected the 1999 Land Mine Treaty and tossed out the 1997 Kyoto Treaty negotiated by the Clinton Administration, reversed the George H. W. Bush 1990 tax hike and the SDI cancellation, signed gentlemen’s agreements instead of something like the 1991 START treaty, stepped away from the 1990 Powell Doctrine, subordinated Reagan’s war on drugs and anti-Soviet policy to the war on terror, reversed Ford’s 1976 executive order banning assassinations, reversed the Nixon-era 1972 national policy on the Space Shuttle, withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty, reversed the 1971 NERVA cancellation, let the 1970 Clean Air Act segue into “Clear Skies”, and expanded Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Medicare Act. He is currently working on redoing Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act of 1935.
Before he gets to 1935, there are a couple of decisions I would like him to revisit. Specifically, I think he should go back to Kennedy’s famous September 1962 speech and revise it and sub in “Mars” or “Jupiter” or “Saturn” for “the Moon”. In George Dyson’s book, a nuclear rocket trip to Saturn by 1970 appears just as feasible in 1959 as Von Braun’s chemical rocket trip to the Moon “in this decade” did at that time. It looks even more lopsided now as we try to create a significant presence on the Moon and move on to Mars than when Von Braun belatedly endorsed the idea in the mid-sixties.
If Bush decided to revive the Orion project, he would also need to withdraw from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 and the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Bush has got NERVA, but is that enough? Internal combustion nuclear engines have an inherent limit. If the exhaust is too hot, it melts the rocket nozzles. This is an inherent limit in all non-pulsed designs. By using external combustion, fantastic temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun can be achieved, yet the plasma will cool sufficiently as it expands so as not to melt the pusher plate of the Orion.
Orion’s fantastic engineering is not good enough if the rocket kills people. Freeman Dyson, one of the great contributors to Orion, feels that he was decisive in getting the Orion project nixed in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. He was making the decision based on the fallout. He calculated that there would be enough fallout to kill one to ten people globally with each launch.
The morality of this is too simplistic: It kills people so let’s not do it. That would rule out just about every human transportation type. How can we balance the books?
The morality of this is too simplistic: It kills people so let’s not do it. That would rule out just about every human transportation type. |
If something is worth a lot, then it is worth doing even if it kills people. We agree to a steady flux of deaths from the particulates and radiation released by coal-fired power plants because we want our homes heated and our refrigerators to run. One rough estimate is 100,000 deaths a year from coal-fired power plants.
Suppose we simultaneously enact a policy to cut the coal contribution to global radiation by more than we added radiation to the atmosphere with the Orion launches (for example, by taxing Orion launches and using the money to buy coal emission permits)? Well, we would be saving lives on balance. The absolute moralist nevertheless would say, “No! Just save the lives and forget the Orion launch.”
Here are a few of many reasons why to embrace the risk:
So was Orion cancelled in a crisis involving the philosophy of economics? Perhaps. It is not clear that we have evolved all that much in this respect. So perhaps the next billion dollars that President Bush spends on the space program should be used to research the utility theory of death and sacrifice enough to convince the world to use the fabulous designs already on the shelf.
I can barely make this out. The HTML formatting is very strange.
I haven't heard anything about 'Orion' in years, but it's still a great idea that makes 'environmentalists' absolutely freak.
So9
If you look on Amazon.com for Jeff Bezoss personal book reviews, the only rocket book you will see is Project Orion. His summary from April 14, 2002 is as follows:
For those of us who dream of visiting the outer planets, seeing Saturns rings up close without intermediation of telescopes or charge-coupled devices, well, we pretty much *have* to read Project Orion. In 1958, some of the worlds smartest people, including famous physicist Freeman Dyson (the authors father), expected to visit the outer planets in Orion, a nuclear-bomb propelled ship big enough and powerful enough to seat its passengers in lazy-boy recliners. They expected to start their grand tour by 1970. This was not pie-in-the-sky optimism; they had strong technical reasons for believing they could do it.
To pull this book together, George Dyson did an astonishing amount of research into this still largely classified project. And, maybe because hes connected to Orion through his father, the author captures the strong emotion of the project and the team. Highly recommended.
It is difficult for me to accept that such a promising technology was abandoned. But there was no mission for it until now. It was politically too hot to handle. Too much fallout. Freeman Dyson said, this is the first time in modern history that a major expansion of human technology has been suppressed for political reasons. So are the engineering and politics any different now?
Orion will not disappoint. The design achieves an Isp of 12,000 seconds with an Earth-launched payload capacity to LEO of 5500 tons. The fuel would be 800 nuclear bombs.
This is a late 50s design that has actually had its economics improve over time. The weight of 800 nuclear bombs has gone way down. For the eight terajoule (two kiloton) explosions required for the 4500-ton version that can carry 20 people to the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn in the same trip, instead of the 900 tons of nuclear bombs at almost one ton each, there would need to be probably only 50 tons worth of bombs since artillery shells were subsequently developed that weighed much, much, less than what could be conceived in the late 50s. Furthermore, an artillery shell is what is needed because the bomb is going to be shot out the bottom of the Orion ship at intervals as short as one-fourth of a second at first.
Shock absorbers have also come a long way since the 1950s. To protect the people from the huge kick of a blast, Orion envisioned huge shock absorbers designed to absorb the impulse of the 1000-ton pusher plate with the entire rest of the ship. Other versions looked at further absorption just in the crew area. My recommendation would be to put the crew on a long electromagnetic track. They could potentially be the only part of the ship that is isolated from the high-g shocks. By having a very small mass isolated from the pusher shocks, the mass of the shock absorbers could be reduced from 900 tons to something more manageable. Additional mass would need to be used to strengthen the components that would not have been exposed to high-g shocks in the old design, but I think a substantial improvement in the mass fraction devoted to shock absorption should be able to be achieved.
Cabin design, mass economization, and recycling have also been improved quite a bit in the last 50 years. That should allow us to launch more people for the same gross weight. Personally, I think it would be sexier and more popular in Japan to launch the Battleship Yamato. Or perhaps a 20,000-ton Ohio-class nuclear submarine should be delivered to the oceans of Europa.
As the engineering gets better and better the bigger you get, why was this cheap, effective technology stillborn? Not the engineering.
Is it possible that politics have evolved sufficiently to come full circle? Would Queen Isabella have quibbled about crew and onshore subjects dying in order to launch three ships to the New World?
President Bush in his first term has been successively undoing many of the treaties, policies, and laws written in the last 50 years. Working backwards from negotiation dates, Bush Rejected the 1999 Land Mine Treaty and tossed out the 1997 Kyoto Treaty negotiated by the Clinton Administration, reversed the George H. W. Bush 1990 tax hike and the SDI cancellation, signed gentlemens agreements instead of something like the 1991 START treaty, stepped away from the 1990 Powell Doctrine, subordinated Reagans war on drugs and anti-Soviet policy to the war on terror, reversed Fords 1976 executive order banning assassinations, reversed the Nixon-era 1972 national policy on the Space Shuttle, withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty, reversed the 1971 NERVA cancellation, let the 1970 Clean Air Act segue into Clear Skies, and expanded Lyndon Johnsons 1965 Medicare Act. He is currently working on redoing Franklin Roosevelts Social Security Act of 1935.
Before he gets to 1935, there are a couple of decisions I would like him to revisit. Specifically, I think he should go back to Kennedys famous September 1962 speech and revise it and sub in Mars or Jupiter or Saturn for the Moon. In George Dysons book, a nuclear rocket trip to Saturn by 1970 appears just as feasible in 1959 as Von Brauns chemical rocket trip to the Moon in this decade did at that time. It looks even more lopsided now as we try to create a significant presence on the Moon and move on to Mars than when Von Braun belatedly endorsed the idea in the mid-sixties.
If Bush decided to revive the Orion project, he would also need to withdraw from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 and the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Bush has got NERVA, but is that enough? Internal combustion nuclear engines have an inherent limit. If the exhaust is too hot, it melts the rocket nozzles. This is an inherent limit in all non-pulsed designs. By using external combustion, fantastic temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun can be achieved, yet the plasma will cool sufficiently as it expands so as not to melt the pusher plate of the Orion.
Orions fantastic engineering is not good enough if the rocket kills people. Freeman Dyson, one of the great contributors to Orion, feels that he was decisive in getting the Orion project nixed in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. He was making the decision based on the fallout. He calculated that there would be enough fallout to kill one to ten people globally with each launch.
The morality of this is too simplistic: It kills people so lets not do it. That would rule out just about every human transportation type. How can we balance the books?
If something is worth a lot, then it is worth doing even if it kills people. We agree to a steady flux of deaths from the particulates and radiation released by coal-fired power plants because we want our homes heated and our refrigerators to run. One rough estimate is 100,000 deaths a year from coal-fired power plants.
Suppose we simultaneously enact a policy to cut the coal contribution to global radiation by more than we added radiation to the atmosphere with the Orion launches (for example, by taxing Orion launches and using the money to buy coal emission permits)? Well, we would be saving lives on balance. The absolute moralist nevertheless would say, No! Just save the lives and forget the Orion launch.
Here are a few of many reasons why to embrace the risk:
So was Orion cancelled in a crisis involving the philosophy of economics? Perhaps. It is not clear that we have evolved all that much in this respect. So perhaps the next billion dollars that President Bush spends on the space program should be used to research the utility theory of death and sacrifice enough to convince the world to use the fabulous designs already on the shelf.
ORION was big part of the better of the two "asteroid disaster movies" a few years ago, Deep Impact. A few years earlier Niven and Pournelle made it a central part of their novel "Footfall." The description in the book of the Orion ship, is:
"Take a big metal plate," Curtis said. "Big and thick. Make it a hemisphere, but it could even be flat. Put a large ship, say the size of a battleship, on top of it. You want a really good shock absorber system between the plate and the ship.
"Now put an atom bomb underneath and light it off. I guarantee you that sucker will move." He sketched as he talked. "You keep throwing atom bombs underneath the ship. It puts several million pounds into orbit. In fact, the more mass youve got, the smoother the ride."
My only problem with this article is that he assumes you have to launch the Orion ship from the bottom of the gravity well. We must seperate those ideas. Launch from Earth with either conventional rockets or some other technology, such as a Lofstrom Loop or space elevator, but when you want to leave LEO kick in the boom-boom.
I guarantee you that sucker will move.
mark for later
Wasn't Orion a relative of the Pluto project? Pluto was the first design of a cruise missile - that used unshielded nuclear rockets to power the main vehicle. This main vehicle would cruise around the planet dropping smaller nuclear munitions as necessary. The supersonic speeds, radioactive exhaust, and tree flattening course killed the idea. Too bad.
Check out Pluto.
Yeah, but look what you guys did to YOUR homeworld.
(Hey, I read 'Protector')
And I LOVE Orion. It's the blunt force trauma of space drives.
= )
Ain't it wonderful. All laid out like that makes a big impact.
Pluto sounds more like NERVA or the "atomic aircraft" project. The latter actually flew a reactor, on a B-36, but it didn't power the aircraft. That was done by the 8 recip engines and podded jets (if the test bird had the jets, the early ones did not)
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