Project Orion was a secret Cold War project to develop a spaceship powered by nuclear explosions. It sounds like a crazy idea but it probably would have worked and delivered hundreds or even thousands of tons of payload into orbit. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of the early 1960s rendered it politically unfeasible.
There's a good BBC documentary about it on YouTube.
If you really want to geek out about the details, here's a link to a declassified document (a 176 page PDF) of highly technical design information. I found it quite fascinating.
Of course, setting off a few hundred nuclear bombs in the atmosphere (or even low-Earth orbit) isn't a good idea, but the design is feasible assuming you could assemble it from large sections launched into orbit by non-nuclear boosters (something that is covered in the design document).
2 comments:
Thanks for the pointer to the Project Orion mini-doc from the BBC. George Dyson's book is a good read, as is Kenneth Brower's The Starship and the Canoe (probably out of print, but worth trying to find used).
I've read Dyson's book - it's quite good. Thanks for the tip on Bower's book. I've not seen it; perhaps Toronto Public Library can get it for me.
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