Posted on 10/18/2006 11:37:20 PM PDT by Dallas59
Previously "classified" documents related to Project Orion, the now-aborted plan to send nuke-propelled spaceships to Mars and other planets. Details in this BoingBoing post and podcast.
Prior to this web upload on Flickr, these documents had never before been publicly released.
Tech historian George Dyson collected these papers, and he is the author of "Project Orion," a book which chronicles the project and the lives of the scientists behind it -- including his own father, Freeman Dyson.
The name "Project Orion" is now being used by NASA for a new project, this one not powered by nuclear bombs. This time around, they're trademarking the name.
Project Orion
Clicky Here For Link To Webpage
Sending people in to space propelled by nuclear weapons might at first seem a totally mad idea, but the physics are actually sound. Much research and development was done during the 1960's, and small scale models using conventional explosives actually flew.
The principle is simple: use the power of a nuclear blast to propel a vehicle forward. The obvious problems are the power of the blast and the safety of the vehicle and its crew. It was envisaged that the ships would use a 'Pusher Plate', through which the bombs would be ejected.
This would have an ablative surface and toroidal airbags to cushion the blow, and would have been connected to the rest of the ship by large shock absorbers.
Acceleration experienced by the crew would be smoothed out to acceptable levels. Using nuclear weapons would obviously release a huge amount of energy - far more than conventional rockets - so the ships could be huge, weighing many thousands of tons.
One option which was seriously considered was a mission to Mars
An atomic rocket was tested near Cleveland TX many years ago, probably from the base in LA. 2 women and a boy(Colby)got severe radiation burns but a federal judge hushed it up. Actually the magnetic ring idea for space flight sounded more practical : a superconducting ring about 5mm in cross section and 2-3 km in diameter has a central, offset cabin(thin cables to the ring). Its magnetic field interacts with the solar wind/magnetic field like a sail. Offset it this way and you "mag-sail" outward to mars and beyond, offset it the other way and you drop inward to venus/mercury. Once the su-co current/magnetic dipole is established there is no fuel required, the solar wind is "free". Also the dipole field protects the cabin from charged particles/cosmic rays, sort of a mini-magnetosphere. Sadly enough, NASA didn't show any real interest in the idea, they're all ROCKET SCIENISTS over there, and if it doesn't have BIG BUCKS/FEDERAL PROGRAM written all over it = deep six it...
Focus the (blast)action in a certain direction.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which is, in this case, thrust.
It isn't "pushing" against anything.
Disturbing the Universe.
He gave a lecture to a small group of students including me. Afterwards he answered questions informally. The lecture concerned a strange connection between two branches of physics that had been discovered by Richard Feynman but never published.
He is a thin person, but I don't remember him being noticeably short. I am average height and when I was standing right next to him I don't remember having to look down.
my understanding is that the pusher plate (steel plate several feet thick, IIRC) would ablate from the heat, sending atoms at very high speed rearward and causing the thrust.
Heck, how could I _NOT_ ping you?
The nuclear rocket engines developed in the '60's would be more reliable and efficient. And it's starting to look like they're making a comeback.
Yes, I understand that, but this is not a traditional rocket. I found the answer on another website:
"The propulsion system advocated for the Orion spacecraft was based on an idea first put forward by Stanislaw Ulam and Cornelius Everett in a classified paper in 1955. Ulam and Everett suggested releasing atomic bombs behind a spacecraft, followed by disks made of solid propellant. The bombs would explode, vaporizing the material of the disks and converting it into hot plasma. As this plasma rushed out in all directions, some of it would catch up with the spacecraft, impinge upon a pusher plate, and so drive the vehicle forward.
Ulam and Everett's idea was modified so that instead of propellant disks, the propellant and bomb were combined into a single pulse unit. Plastic was chosen as the propellant material, not only because of its effectiveness in absorbing the neutrons emitted by an atomic explosion but also because it breaks down into lightweight atoms such as those of hydrogen and carbon which move at high speed when hot. This approach, in tandem with the pusher plate concept, offered a unique propulsion system that could simultaneously produce high thrust with high exhaust velocity. "
So, the vaporized plastic is what I was looking for. More than just a bomb is necessary.
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