In the late 1950’s, the U.S. government began research into an interplanterary spacecraft that relied on nuclear detonations for propulsion. The effort, dubbed “Project Orion,” died quietly ater a few years. But many of the documents surrounding the atomic spaceship have remained hidden or classified for more than four decades.
Boing Boing has a bunch of ‘em up, now — as well as an interview with tech historian George Dyson, who’s dad worked on Orion. Check it out.
UPDATE 11:15 AM: “Orion is interesting from a military technology point of view, partly because it was literally a ’space battleship’ with a large stock of nuclear warheads it could deliver anywhere on the planet,” says David Hambling. “In particular, there is a program mentioned in [Dyson's] book called ‘Casaba Howitzer’ which is a nuke with highly directional blast, suitable for attacking buried installations etc. Casaba Howitzer is still, as far as I know, highly classified with no details anywhere.”
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Orion never will be built and given the pollution and nuclear proliferation problems probably never should be built. But it is still a bit sad as it is the only technology that could possibly get us (have gotten us) out there to, say, Saturn with laboratory-sized payloads and crews (in 1965!). With luck another technology will be found some day, but not in my lifetime I bet.
Cranky
The piquantly Arabic-annotated picture of the Orion pulse unit in the new Flickr postings is, AFAIK, a demilitarized version of the Casaba-Howitzer nuclear shaped charge.
I did a quick look around this morning for C-H and found this interesting infobittie that indicates one application that was contemplated for it:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/kennedyjf/viii/33843.htm
141. Summary Record of the 517th Meeting of the National Security Council/1/
Washington, September 12, 1963, 11 a.m.
[EXCERPTS]
/1/Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, 517th NSC Meeting. Top Secret. Drafted by Smith. The 21 attendees at this meeting in the Cabinet Room included the President, Rusk, McNamara, Dillon, Robert Kennedy, Seaborg, McCone, Taylor, McGeorge Bundy, Sorensen, and eight members of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee headed by General Leon W. Johnson. (Ibid., President’s Appointment Book)
Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee
General Taylor presented the Net Evaluation Subcommittee report/2/ and introduced General Leon Johnson, with the suggestion that the President might wish to question him about the report.
[snip]
Attachment/7/
/7/Top Secret.
RESUME OF DISCUSSION DURING NESC BRIEFING OF 12 SEPTEMBER 1963
Speaker–Gen. Johnson–Discussed the need for an effective ABM defense; emphasis on Laser and Casaba-Howitzer, intercepting sub-launched
missile in boost phase.
There is an alternative to orion nuclear pulse
rockets for reaching all the planets of the solar system with our crewed expeditions. It is nuclear electric ion or plasma rocket propulsion
rockets. The technology is similar to that used
in nuclear powered naval vessels except electric rocket engines will be used in place of electric engines turning propeller screws.
tim
There is an alternative to orion nuclear pulse
rockets for reaching all the planets of the solar system with our crewed expeditions. It is nuclear electric ion or plasma propulsion
rockets. The technology is similar to that used
in nuclear powered naval vessels except electric rocket engines will be used in place of electric engines turning propeller screws.This technology
has been around for 50 years already.
tim
Was the US edition of this book significantly different? Great fuss was made on boingboing about this being an Arab* translation with all sorts of classified pics in it, but as far as I can tell all the pictures are identical with the ones appearing in the UK edition.
*What, the Axis of Evil is going to build one of these to bomb the US or something? From layouts in a soft-back book?