Well it wasnt TOO secret (I knew about Project Orion since high school), and NASA as was pointed out had nothing to do with it, it was the airforce. But its par for the course for NASA. They have a bad habit of committing million into research before pulling the plug RIGHT when something was ready to come out of it.

In this case though NASA made the right call. Could you imagine a nuclear BOMB powered spacecraft? In much of the initial planning they had even intended to eject the bombs out on earth and use them to LAUNCH the damn thing....

Same guy as the Dyson Sphere in that TNG episode?

Freeman Dyson would be the guy mentioned in the TNG episode.

@PVIII: Yes..

George seems to have made some peace with his father, George's book "Baidarka: The Kayak" was fairly anti-science as i remember.

And one of Niven/Pournelle's book, "Footfall" i think, used an Orion to defeat the aliens... Not all that secret.

@Falconfire: Anyone here read Footfall?

@codydog: Curses!

@Falconfire:

Only the 1st bomb would be setoff at ground level. The rest would be in the atmosphere and in space. Orion is the most cost effective way to propel a spacecraft. The planned ship would have been 10,000 tons in weight with 4000 tons of that being payload. 4000 tons is more than enough to start a Mars colony in one mission. The space shuttle can only lift 25 tons and then only into orbit. Contrast the pollution/contamination of one Orion launch with 160 shuttle launches.

If a planet-killer asteroid is ever detected and we need a way to combat it, you'll see variants of the Orion coming into existence.

Great presentation. Funny how NASA had no records of any of this and had to purchase it back.

Niven did a bit of explaining about megastructures in his essay "Bigger than Worlds." When he engaged the idea of a Dyson sphere, he decided to do something less wild instead, something between a sphere and a planet, I think. thus the Ringworld was born. Freeman Dyson was certainly a treasure.
Yes, Footfall was a fun read. Building an Orion in secret as a last, desperate effort against aliens? Totally radical! Though I did have a problem believing the aliens wouldn't have suspected something. All those nukes, that massive construction project, all that activity around one particular spot?

@Rybanis:

Beat me to the punch too.

I don't know, at this point isn't fallout some of the least of our worries?

Lets do it!

I've read "Footfall" and a few synopses of the Orion Project concepts. At first, I chalked it up to the particular 1950s notions that; 1, atom bombs are cool, let's use them for everything!; and 2, there's no such thing as unnacceptable environmental colateral damage.
Since then, I've thought, "Hey, it's not really a bad idea." Then I came to the realization that there is no way in hell that people will embrace a vessel that ejects nuclear weapons out it's behind. Not to mention, the public reaction to reopenning the mass production of nuclear devices; regardless of their intended uses.

@Seth L: Still the best alien invasion story ever written, IMHO.

I think it might be possible to scale it down considerably with modern tech. Perhaps we could even launch it in orbit, getting there via a Sea Dragon rocket, or something similar. I'd rather not have to destroy Puget Sound to get an Orion Drive launched :)

Wiki on Sea Dragon: [en.wikipedia.org])

@PeteRR: You basically spelled out the failure right in your post. Even a sub-orbital nuclear blast produces a large amount of fallout, so it wouldnt be 1 bomb, it would have been 3-4 nuclear bombs worth of contamination for one launch.

Not a issue if its the difference between saving our ass, or having a asteroid wipe out Earth, but for normal launches, even with modern "clean" nuclear weapons, it was a dumb idea from a time when radiation poisoning was not nearly understood as it is now.

i want to know more about his kayaking.

@Rybanis: That's how I always imagined this, maybe, working. Two heavy lift rockets, one with the "engine" stage, another with the crew compartment. Assemble them in low orbit and boost it to high orbit then light the atomic stage. It's just speculation, because launching 1000 low yield nukes into the sky just isn't going to get much support behind it. Unless of course elephant like aliens or a big rock changes peoples outlook in a hurry.

I'd like to sit down and have a beer with this guy.

@Oxfordian: Indeed. Its going to take years more until ground-to-LEO transport is reliable enough for moving nukes around. I can't imagine a better use of all those thousands of warheads, though. We could be talking about cruise phases lasting weeks instead of months!

Also, here is another interesting plan that the US Navy toyed with in the 1980's: Project Longshot [en.wikipedia.org]

The talk was fantastic, but I'm even more excited about the TED site in general. Holy crap there's a lot of good stuff there!

@Falconfire:

We set off, i think 300 nukes in Nevada in the 50's and 60's.. i'm too lazy to goog it, but that's pretty close. Plus a dozen or so big ones in the Pacific.

If it took one Orion to set up an asteroid mining base for an orbital elevator, or to stop an asteroid, it would be worth it, but Greenpeace would have a hemorrhage.

@tetracycloide: the book is still on Amazon.. I clipped it for my post, so spelling is correct.

Hey, we already have a nuke-powered mission to Saturn.

Okay, it's not an Orion, but it did piss off a lot of environmentalists bak in the late 90s.

Well, if Dyson couldn't built a nuclear rocket, at least he built a nice vacuum cleaner. Do you think the Dyson company has plans for a nuclear vacuum cleaner?

Nuclear bombs are right at home in space, and not so bad on Earth in limited numbers.

Orion is a perfect example of why I think Kennedy's public-circus Space Race was bad for space development, research, and technology.

I liked the Air Force's thinking (and ability to generate funding) better.
-Kle.

@Rybanis:

True, but how about Gray's Harbor? I would throw Aberdeen/Hoqauim under a nuke. Spokane?

Parts of the great empty former soviet union?

Miami?

@Seth L: Well, I'm partial to Spokane (because I live there). Aberdeen is a good idea, though.

I haven't done my homework. Why Saturn?

@Rybanis:

Ok, not Spokane ; )

I live in Vancouver, and I wouldn't mind launching an orion here.

@Jeff-Minor: Good question. People have been focused on the pie-in-the-sky pro-nuke question, but did these scientists expect to live on a gas giant?

, @Tim Faulkner: It's a just a guess, but back in the 50s, trips to the outer solar system were considered well outside the capabilities of
then-modern rocket science. Hauling enough food, water, and stuff to support a fair sized crew was outside the realm of possibility. Orion offered the chance to accomplish this. Technological advances since then have given us the ability to accomplish investigating the outer solar system remotely, but back in the 50s, it probably seemed that no science would get done without people there to take the data.

@Tim Faulkner:

Those moons are still pretty interesting.

I didn't see a lander in the payload though.

I didn't look close enough at the plots, they expected to go out and back right? Or was their going to be maneuvering to turn the ship around and head home?

@Jeff-Minor:

For Science!

No, really - I'm serious. There's all sorts of stuff we could learn, and people weren't such big chickens back then.
-Kle.

@Falconfire:

If contamination is the stumbling block, then launch from a mobile platform at sea. Design your nukes for the minimal amount of fallout. It seems to me the upside(having enormous amounts of payload being delivered in just one or two missions) far outweighs environmental concerns. Look at the proposals for visiting Mars: tiny payloads, a handful of astronauts. Orion could transport an entire ice-processing refinery to the Martian northpole that could instantly solve the nascent colony's fuel, air, and water problems. You could send a 1000 people on a single launch. We could have a functioning and self-sustaining colony containing 10s of 1000s of members inside of 50 years.

It's past time we get some of humanity's eggs out of this one fragile basket.

Well, yeah, but Saturn? Why not the obvious planet: Jupitor? Saturn is a hell of lot further away. Maybe someone had a real interest in the rings. But even then those rings were theorized to be an accumulation of dust and rocks, not really the safest stuff to try to fly around.

@Jeff-Minor: Maybe it was because Saturn was prettier in a telescope? It's hard to say. The rings would have been a huge draw scientifically in those days, before we understood their nature.

Jupiter has the added benefit of having radiation belts from hell. Spacecraft that get close enough to take good data of the satellites take a hell of a beating. That's what ultimately doomed the Galileo probe (in addition to it's gimpy antenna) and will be the biggest challenge for the proposed Europa Explorer. People don't stand a chance there. I doubt that really influenced their decision, given the Earth analog to the Jovian belts, the Van Allen belts, would have been a new discovery back then. Besides, anyone who wants to ride on a spacecraft propelled by the shockwaves of fission bombs probably sees radiation in completely different terms than I do.

@Jeff-Minor: There is a LOT of radiation present around Jupiter. Galileo was constantly getting reset because of that. Now imagine sending a mission, with a good group of people, plus their consumables, PLUS radiation shielding to keep the crew alive for more than a few hours.

Technology is going to have to advance to the point where we can create affordable, efficient, shielding against inter-solar and planetary radiation. Until that happens, we're going to be pretty much limited to Mars and the asteroid belt.

Thanks all for reminding me about "Footfall"
Exploding nukes to launch a space ship, bad idea. The number needed is way more then you'd think. The massive base plate and shock absorbers to explode the bombs against is still technically questionable. Plus, how do you steer the damn thing? Explode a little more to the right no the other right. Don't think so.

The coolest thing about "Footfall" was the weapon Thor's Hammer. A simple metal rod with basic steering falling from orbit with kenitic energy causing nuke level damage without all that pesky radiation.

What a wonderful clip. I've never heard George Dyson speak before but have enjoyed his writing for years.

My dad tried to explained Dyson Spheres to me when I was a tyke and had me read George's book "the Starship & the Canoe", about his relationship with his father.

The Orion concept shows up in other essays and stories as some of you have noted. Dan Simmons used an Orion-style ship in "Illium". It always seemed to me that once you boosted it away from Earth or other biosphere thingy the radiation from it would be negligible compared to solar winds etc. but I'm no scientist.

It's been quite awhile since I read "FootFall", was'nt that "Lucifer's Hammer" without the nasty xenopachyderm people?

Sagan mentioned Orion in his Cosmos series, too.

Rybanis, I don't think we have to worry about the issue for a long time. There is no Discovery in our near future. Besides, I'm in the Robot Camp. Send better and better probes, AI with no need for all that wasted human space. The "experience" of seeing it up close and personal is not required. Spending billions of dollars so that a few select humans can take a trip to another world is not my idea of tax dollars well spent. Their subjective experience, as grand as that may be--is not the kind of heroic venture I want to fund. Feed starving kids in Africa first.

Robots aren't as flexible as people, and can't do as much. Sure, they're a bargain - but so what?

Look at the 'Face on Mars'. If we had people there, they could've just gone there and said 'uh, it's a hill'.

Feeding starving kids in Africa doesn't actually help anything. What we need to do to fix 3rd world disasters is make everyone 'rich'. The way to do that is with scientific development, and doing that research on the cheap is a false economy.
-Kle.

@Jeff-Minor: We're still spending billions on space probes.....just not hundreds of billions.

@Klebert: I'll have to disagree with you RE: the face on Mars. The recent Mars missions, MGS, Odyssey, MRO, all imaged the hell out of the Face on Mars from every phase angle.....and the Hoagland followers said "Meh." Some people don't believe we ever landed on the Moon. In short, there are just some people who are too stupid and stubborn to deal with on these issues.

Hundreds of billions on a manned mission vs billions on unmanned, and you'll be hard pressed to get anyone, laymen or scientists alike, to think manned missions are worth it in the near term.

@noncornbatant: Really? Totally missed that. I wonder why they "reclassified" it?