USAF Spaceplane Launches Next Month.

[darthdavid]

"Trying" being the key word in that sentence since every Orion proposal I've ever heard had them staying in space forever after they were launched so they'd pretty much have to make up the procedure to do so on the fly (though the pusher plate would probably make a pretty good heat shield as long as you could convince the ship to enter the atmosphere ass end first and not start tumbling...).

PS With the amount of fissile material carried even on an 'unarmed' Orion (seriously, it's hard to call something with more nuclear firepower on board than many nuclear powers unarmed, even if it's not designed to be used in that capacity) 'watching from a safe distance' means 'watch it on TV from another hemisphere'.

PPS Don't get me wrong, I totally wish we'd built some of those bad boys but you have to give the proper respect to something that fucking dangerous...

[adam_grif]

...You know what would be hilarious to watch from a safe distance? An Orion ship trying to land.

If an Orion ship is landing, something has gone terribly wrong. They seem great for Surface-to-Orbit and fairly good for Orbit-to-Orbit, but it doesn't strike me as a reusable launcher. Although I suppose you could build one, but ideally it wouldn't be using the NPP to land.

[Simon_Jester]

If an Orion ship is landing, something has gone terribly wrong. They seem great for Surface-to-Orbit and fairly good for Orbit-to-Orbit, but it doesn't strike me as a reusable launcher. Although I suppose you could build one, but ideally it wouldn't be using the NPP to land.

That is why it would be hilarious; it's a really bad idea. With lots of explosions involved.

[adam_grif]

I'm getting this mental image of an Orion craft making first contact, the aliens inviting us down to land after we indicate that we "come in peace" then an interstellar war being triggered because we accidentally used the NPP to decelerate.