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Posted on 10/29/2009 7:07:52 AM PDT by tricky_k_1972
"Orion" is a never-tested pipe dream. NERVA is fully developed and tested hardware. Niven and Pournelle made more money from Orion than was ever spent on it.
When I was a grad student minoring in nuclear studies, one of my profs was a guy who had been working on NERVA. He was a specialist in shielding design.
My thought is first things first. Dump some of NASA’s budget into space elevator research. (material science for mass high quality carbon nanotube production) Drastically reduce the cost of getting out of the gravity well and proceed with propulsion concepts such as this. My 2 cents.
He obviously hasn’t spoken with Obama ~~~
My thoughts exactly how long did it take us to go to the moon the first time? and now they want to take what 10-15 years to go back something smells about the whole deal. We've had 40 years to go to Mars and what have we done fly around and around the earth in a ship that was out dated years ago.
Actually it was proof of concept tested - just for the record. It was at that point Tricy Icky Dicky pulled the plug on it and other space propulsion systems settling for a dangerous low orbit only system.
“fly around and around the earth in a ship that was out dated years ago.”
something that was outdated and outclassed at the onset.
Ive been saying this for years.....
Nuclear is the way to go.....
and the Nuclear to use...is Freeman Dysons Project Orion.
Mars in coupla weeks.
Lets grow some BALLS America.
Orion was tested with conventional explosives and worked like a dream...Von Braun was highly impressed.
.....testing of course would have to be done with nuclear...but all new systems have to be tested anyway...
IMHO external pulse is the way to go, and I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I read the article and realized their plan was not to be of that variety. But I’ve no specific expertise in the area . . . so perhaps a NERVA or KIWI would be better.
But, on a serious note, I guess they actually did some testing, I believe down in San Diego somewhere. I saw the footage on a TV show about the whole effort. They used a scale model and chemical explosives but it did work. Obviously, they'd would have needed to do much more testing than that, but I guess they were confident it would work.
On THIS board?? Given the many nutcase notions passed around here, unless labeled otherwise, no, I don't assume that anyone is joking, no matter how nutsy the notion.
Orion would be a gigantic waste of fissionables. Unless the laser guys can get laser-induced fusion to work, Orion is, and will remain, vaporware. NERVA, otoh, is pretty much "off the shelf" technology. Build the reactors at the space station, fuel up and go.
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