Project Orion. Possible?

[loser_boy_3]

We're all familar with the project. Massive spaceships the size of the queen mary were going to be sent all around the solar system at a price of a couple billion dollars in todays money. It doesn't seem like much of a cost when considering about 500 billions been spent on the iraq war. Why was this project scuttled? It seemed possible to all physicists involved and sitll appears to be well designed. Any thoughts? Imagine living in an age when men have been as far as Saturn in the 70s.. the wonders today could hold. Alas, we choose instead to engage in war and destroy hopes of a greater human race than ever before.

 

[vogon13]

Nukes in atmosphere, fireball engulfment of vehicle at launch, one bomb in detonation sequence failing to ignite, large minimum size of vehicle, testban treaties, lingering doubts about fatigue failure of pusher plate, landing the thing. No single item on list is deal killer, but size of list, and the fact that funding dried up before some of the really necessary computer simulation techniques of the last decade really doomed project. Don't get me wrong, I would dearly love to see project resumed, but I accept reality of situation and proceed from there. Heck, they thought they could build and fly the thing to Enceladus by 1970. How would you like to be living on that time line instead of the one we're on now? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[rogers_buck]

There's been a few threads on this. The most recent is in M&L. Worth reading since it has some links to current proponents.