Project Orion: America's Cold War Plan for Nuclear-Powered Space Exploration

I love Orion.
Couple of things I didn't hear mentioned:
1) The nukes were shaped so that most of the blast pointed up to the pusher plate for higher efficiency.
2.) The idea was to launch into orbit using the nukes. The Orions were heavier than aircraft carriers. There was no feasible rocket engine that would lift them.
3.) They made an ARMED version for the Air Force that featured full-sized battleship cannons and nuclear plasma spears. In addition to boring old nuke missiles.

There is 0 debate about its feasibility they proved it was feasible 60 years ago with conventional explosive powered models. The issue is still the geo politics of it and the environmental and health concerns associated. If we built the infrastructure in space like on the moon for example there would be 0 health or environmental impacts for earth. So really the main hangup today is still the geopolitical situation around “nukes in space”

Isaiah 2.4

Speed kills how do you slow down !

How can you have a shockwave in a vacuum?

Orion was an engineering problem, not a theoretical challenge. Unless reactionless drive technology is developed, it WILL rise again (Project Phoenix then, I suppose), when fabrication facilities offworld become ubiquitous.

It has been said that any problem of scarcity (want, lack) can be solved with limitless energy, and that difficulty rises proportionately with the amount of energy required. Orion is the textbook example of this principle, seeking to accomplish the mind-boggling (interstellar travel) using the most energetic reactions we have begun to master (fusion--but our mastery today is limited to apocalyptic destruction).

The first humans to reach another star will, I think, arrive on a ship powered by a series of Teller-Ulam-design firecrackers.

This should be done. People spend all their time afraid , they need to knock it off , grow a pair and get after it.

lost me in the first 2 swconds with the political bias crap

Verein Fur Ramschiffahrt......really......producer having a go at you then?

See. Theres a solution. You do not need to consider project orion as a rocket analog project, as in launching vertically from the ground. Build a giant project orion , but give it wings , lay it on the ground on a local large runway, you now have a massive conventionally proppelled aircraft carrier size project orion, fly the whole titanic thing to high altitude over antartica , then and only then , initiate the nuclear pulse sequence of orion. No populous over antarctica, virtually 0 fallout from high altitude sequence ignition , smaller sum number of charges to get into orbit. NO EMP damage by virtue of 0 ground infrastucture over antarctica .

Ill take my nobel prize by check

Peasents

Cold fusion or even fusion power in general is our last hope.

"They irradiated their own planet???" - Quark.

Mr. Trump was elected in 2016 … wanker

Haha 😂 that name made me laugh Ramshafart 😂😂

So the shock absorber that's between 500 to 1000 tonn3s 😂 and just what was the plan yo launch this thing out of earth's atmosphere 🙄???

Bull shit invention.Would not work proper for very obvious reasons with me.

If future geopolitics free up 10s of thousands of nuclear warheads, maybe something like this could use them more usefully...

What I never understood about Orion is, yeh, plan was great to accelerate, but how was the space craft going to slow down near its destination?

I'd love to see this tried in space

Structural integrity seems to be a a challenge for the super orion...

But more importantly at those speeds even small space debris will be fatal... which the craft will surely encounter in such a long journey

What is seems more reliable traveling through space

Well, guess I'm not one of your target audience. Rehashing old pics of NASA rocket engineers keep the secret ol space travel, well, secret. Imagine a whole world watching every NASA move on the (since this appears to be a british born show) tele, and admire these great rockets blasting off their launchpad and out of sight. Presumably into space. OK, what then? Who thinks of these things and where are their pics? Is space flight the same as atmospheric flight? 70 years after man stepped on the moon, the stories have been told. Except the how to control a space craft in space?
Well, this is where your Project Orion dreams fall apart. Going really, really fast in an uncontrolled way is, well, not something any sane human might dare to do. Those non-shuttle astronauts were all pilots because, well, they showed the ability to determine how an out of controlled spacecraft might be brought back under control. Of, course, the in-space flight controls would best be something similar to aircraft controls. Moving this control this way has this effect. Again, who thought/engineered these things? I know. Does your preferred search engine know?
There was even a failure of this system during the apollo project ... with an investigation. Still, the secret was kept. Hmmm ...

This video brings back memories of sitting in a (mini) lecture about Project Orion...
I still have copies of documentation relating to this endevour.

Mostly still classified, it could/could have worked, change the fuel to fusion instead of fission. It was probably the idea of using it as an orbital bombardment platform...

how would it decelerate though

From the time of faraday we know things
Marconi saw it

Atila was there😊

Nuclear is very easy to eliminate
You don't even need a solar hit

Nazis are a fake

Satellites go around earth

They saw it
It doesn't work

How did they get out of earth

Nuclear is written by greeks

2017 trump btw

Man, we really need to do something like this. Automated though, no humans.

LOVE YOUR VIDS BUT SLOW IT DOWN.... WHARS THE RUCH?

You should Do a mega project on NERVA

Like he says it might one day save our civilization

The spaceship Messiah in the movie DEEP IMPACT was an Orion-powered vehicle, as described at the end of this video.

This is a really interesting video, but you say that one tenth the speed of light is 30,000 metres per second. Isn't it 30,000 kilometres per second?

Wham! Wham! Wham! God was knocking, and he wanted in BAD.

Simple solution to those people who might live near it...don't tell them.

i mean sounds like it would probably work, but at what cost

Lmao well hate to say it he was elected in 2016

There were several developments from Project Orion, whose technical details remain classified. Casaba Howitzer is one. What little detail I've been able to find, describes it as a kind of nuclear shaped charge. Apparently it's a variation on the pusher charges designed for the Orion pulse rockets. The pusher charges themselves were a kind of diffuse shaped charge, that focused the blast in a sort of lozenge shape. This would increase the propulsion force, while enabling the use of smaller bombs.

his closing remark is the premise of Deep Impact

Please do a number on project flying crowbar as well