Economics of Project Orion

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-11-04 11:35am

Ignoring the hazards of fallout and radiation how much would launching payloads from Earth to orbit via Project Orion style technology cost compared to rockets ? Also would it be possible to launch humans to orbit in such a way ?

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2005-11-04 11:50am

First: What IS Project Orion?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2005-11-04 11:54am

...is that the crackpot idea of putting a spaceship on top of a nuke, pressing the button, and hope that at least some part of the irradiated payload makes orbit ?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2005-11-04 11:58am

Actually, if this is the same Project Orion we're thinking of, I believe that was only to be used in space itself, for obvious reasons.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2005-11-04 11:58am

LadyTevar wrote:First: What IS Project Orion?

http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html
Google is your friend.

Basically, we build a ship with a shitload of armor on the bottom and put a nuke or three under it, light the fuse, say "WHEEEE!" and off we go.

Dunno about the feasibility or costs, though.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-11-04 12:02pm

Bounty wrote:...is that the crackpot idea of putting a spaceship on top of a nuke, pressing the button, and hope that at least some part of the irradiated payload makes orbit ?

It wasn't a crackpot idea, it was legitimate research into high-end propulsion techniques. Yes, it was only used in space itself.

The actual project was sound, the concept was legitimate, however, the expectations and goals were too extreme for it to be seriously considered as an alternative. It was a novel way of using nukes for a peaceful purpose, however.

The project was never intended to use nukes on the planet to launch a ship into space. Yes, it is possible to do it, but it results as being a VERY bad idea, and much harder to control the forces involved on a planet as opposed to in space.

Atlan · Post by **Atlan** » 2005-11-05 05:22pm

Hotfoot wrote:
Bounty wrote:...is that the crackpot idea of putting a spaceship on top of a nuke, pressing the button, and hope that at least some part of the irradiated payload makes orbit ?
It wasn't a crackpot idea, it was legitimate research into high-end propulsion techniques. Yes, it was only used in space itself.

The actual project was sound, the concept was legitimate, however, the expectations and goals were too extreme for it to be seriously considered as an alternative. It was a novel way of using nukes for a peaceful purpose, however.

The project was never intended to use nukes on the planet to launch a ship into space. Yes, it is possible to do it, but it results as being a VERY bad idea, and much harder to control the forces involved on a planet as opposed to in space.

Oh YES it was. Thing is, they calculated how much fallout you'd get from that, and it turned out that to get a 3000 ton ship into orbit you'd get about as much fallout as a single 5 megaton groundlevel blast.
Right now that sounds horrible, but in the fifties tests like that were a dime a dozen, so the Orion launch fallout was considered to be acceptable.
For the full story, read "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship" by George Dyson.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-11-05 05:32pm

They did practise with mock-ups too using conventional explosives. Really, think of it as nothing more than a pulse-jet engine with a slower cyclic rate.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2005-11-05 07:18pm

Orion would have worked too, if it wasn't for air resistance. They've got to build the Orion/Daedelus in space or on the moon.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-11-05 07:38pm

Orion was originally designed to lift a spacecraft from surface to orbit. Sorry for those who got told otherwise; it's part of the buckets of misinformation spread in the modern revival of interest by authors wanting Nazis in space or whatever.

The idea is you build a ten thousand ton starship with a 'pusher plate' on the bottom. You feed a steady flow of specialied bombs.. Lower yeild than normal minimum, so the bastards were expensive.. Under the plate, detonating one at a time and riding the shockwaves upwards. Another ten thousand tons makes up the fuel of the most popular design(Though designs went up to 40k tons, I'm told). The design was 16 stories high, with a 135 diameter pusher plate. Approximately 2000 bombs, starting with .1kt devices once every second, and progressing to one 20kt device every ten seconds, would be deployed to launch this behemoth.

This is where the problems start. For one, building this great bastard would take twelve years.. And about 100m$ a year. In 1960 dollars. After you've plowed 1.2 billion into this massive assemblage, it can carry 150 people.. Up. It was not designed to land. Some manner of conventional craft would be required to exchange crews and bring stuff down.

The bombs to build this were estimated to come it at around another billion, for a one way trip up.

The only time Orion was proposed for 'space only' was in a rather desperate grasp for funding from NASA, where a 200,000 pound vehicle would be hoisted up via two Saturn V's, and go to Mars. It never made it anywhere.

The nuclear contamination figures produced were very low; less than 1% increase in pollution at the time. Unfortunately, the math was done for fission-free fusion devices. There was a lack of them then, and I'm given to understand still a lack of them now. The amount of contamination more likely? Well, the 50s Nuclear Loving Government had misgivings about the effects. Yes, the people who brought you the Nuclear Tripwire of Davey Crocketts didn't trust that many bombs going off.

The EMP and X-ray releases would be really nasty stuff; kiss any satellites in the hemisphere you ascend in goodbye unless they're very hardened.

This discussion purposefully ignores the truly massive problems with long-term spaceflight and large crews in space. We really have little experience now; in the time periods when Orion is inevitably trotted out, it's much less. Hell, just consider computing for navigation; interplanetary flight would be a nightmare, and all you have are room-sized behemoths with less function than a pocket calculator.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2005-11-06 12:57am

Low-yield devices put out proportionally more radiation, so if they managed a bunch of .1 kiloton devices... icky.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-11-06 02:20am

Something to keep in mind about Orion is that any design from 10,000 all the way up to 8,000,000 tons would use about the same amount of fissile material. This was because most of the yields where artificially low. Now an 8 million ton ship isn't very feasible but several hundred thousand tons at least ought to be.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-11-06 02:26am

Sea Skimmer wrote:Something to keep in mind about Orion is that any design from 10,000 all the way up to 8,000,000 tons would use about the same amount of fissile material. This was because most of the yields where artificially low. Now an 8 million ton ship isn't very feasible but several hundred thousand tons at least ought to be.

It was stressing designs to the limit to work out a sixteen story one; there are limits on what you can realistically build down here. Now, I have no doubt that by this point in time, you might be able to do it. But the stresses on the hull will spike upwards nastily as you increase size. You'll eventually just be unable to with your material science, which is why, I suspect, the real designs capped in the tens of thousands.

Still, that's alot of spaceship.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2005-11-06 05:57am

The only reason an "Orion" would ever be practical is if humans had to put something very massive into space FAST. I seem to recall some anime where they "orioned" a cobbled-together battlecruiser into orbit to fight aliens.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2005-11-06 07:43am

Orion couldn't be used to potentially put a station into orbit, could it?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-11-06 07:48am

If the station was rugged enough to take the stress of lifting it up via impulse, then yes. Though most stations tend to be fragile given they don't have to deal with the harshness of lift-off and re-entry. It could at least take up huge sections of a bigger station if need be. I'd love to see a 2001 style rotating station like NASA once thought of until ISS was proposed.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-11-06 08:07am

You could have bigass rugged one-piece stations.

Hmmm... could it be possible, in the near future or whatever, for the military to use Orion to put battlestations (or battleships) into orbit? A big, heavy thing that could stand up to the rigors of atomic liftoff would be excessive for standard space exploration, but won't it be perfect for military use?

nickolay1 · Post by **nickolay1** » 2005-11-06 01:40pm

Once again, we have the problem of it fucking up every non-hardened satellite in the hemisphere.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2005-11-06 02:23pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:If the station was rugged enough to take the stress of lifting it up via impulse, then yes. Though most stations tend to be fragile given they don't have to deal with the harshness of lift-off and re-entry. It could at least take up huge sections of a bigger station if need be. I'd love to see a 2001 style rotating station like NASA once thought of until ISS was proposed.

The Orion itself could simply be the spacestation. A 10,000t Orion in orbit would be larger than all other space-stations to date put together, after all.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2005-11-06 02:25pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Orion would have worked too, if it wasn't for air resistance. They've got to build the Orion/Daedelus in space or on the moon.

Air resistance simply isn't an issue--yes, it would be bad for an object of that size, but already by the 1960s the simple fact is that we were launching rockets which accelerated at 400gs. The rather mild acceleration of the Orion, never exceeding 8gs, is nothing compared to that in terms of the friction it would generate, even with a much large surface being presented into the airflow.

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-11-06 03:20pm

The orion ship wouldn't make a bad battleship. It's already capable of withstanding small nuclear blasts. By pointing its pusher plate at the enemy it should gain a fair amount of protection.

tumbletom · Post by **tumbletom** » 2005-11-06 05:11pm

What if it fell? Like when it was launching or something?

Post by **Beowulf** » 2005-11-06 06:34pm

tumbletom wrote:What if it fell? Like when it was launching or something?

That's really only a concern if the second bomb fails to go off. The first one fails, no problem, the second one fails, you're a couple hundred feet off the ground, with nothing supporting you...

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-11-06 06:38pm

Ten thousand tons of starship throwing out a combined amount of ten thousand tons of nuclear explosives. I think we can all guess what it failing to get a stable rising and starting to fall would be:

Lots of pain.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2005-11-06 07:24pm

Takeoff weight was 10k tons. The nuclear devices are included in that weight. And also, I believe the plan is to use fission devices. Fusion isn't much use at the yields we're using. You need to get significantly larger the 20kt devices for it to make sense. 20kt isn't much larger than the two devices we used in war, which were notoriously inefficent.