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Title: Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson ISBN: 0-8050-7284-5 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.95 (19 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Poor book saved by amazing subject
Comment: What was/is amazing about the Orion project is the fact that as far as we can tell it would have worked. By worked, I mean it would have made our current space shuttle and space station projects look like covered wagons in the age of autos. If history had taken just a slightly different direction, we could have had several building size bases on the moon by the early seventies, probably sent manned expeditions to Mars and even beyond by the 80's.
But this book is not a great treatment of the subject. There is a lot of technical discussion but little organization. Characters come and go, various memos are written, and people write techical papers on building two story high shock asorbers. All well and good but what is missing is the real story and a unifying analysis of the project to propel a spaceship by riding atomic detonations.
The author has done a valuable service by bringing this fascination program to our attention. In addition, it is very clear that chemical rockets have serious limitations. Mankind is unlikely to make much movement away from the earth without a revitalized Project Orion.
Rating: 5
Summary: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship
Comment: Dyson, son of the distinguished British-born physicist Freeman Dyson, unveils a wealth of formerly classified information covering the attempt of a group of US scientists, beginning in 1957, to develop and launch a space vehicle powered solely by serial explosions of nuclear devices. The elder Dyson, who lends extensive personal perspectives here, was involved with the effort (sponsored by the Defense Department's hush-hush Advanced Research Projects Agency) from its inception; the list of its proponents reads like a roster of Nobel candidates, including one winner-the world-renowned atomic scientist Edward Teller. So it's made immediately clear that, as hard as it may be to accept, detonating nuclear bombs right behind a huge, bullet-shaped spaceship was, and still is, by some, considered not only a practical avenue of technical pursuit but one offering far more promise for extending man's horizon into the Solar System than those wimpy "chemical" rockets-the Atlases, Titans, etc.-that Wernher von Braun was simultaneously developing. (Briefed on Orion several years into the project, in fact, von Braun readily endorsed the concept.) Dyson's myriad interviews nicely capture the sweep of a grandiose technical scheme, but also the rapturous initial state of Orion scientists whose coup, as they see it, has them turning nuclear weapons into plowshares under the auspices-not to mention watchful eyes-of the same generals who want to back down the Soviet Union at any cost. However, political obstacles would become even more daunting than the considerable technical challenges, as small, fission-based devices (like those intended to boost Orion) came to be viewed in some circles as even more dangerous than megaton-yielding H-bombs (since military commanders might actually be tempted to use one). Ultimately, creeping realization that the potential effects of radioactive fallout had been dangerously understated for years undermined what support remained, and so Orion's budget was axed in 1964. An intimate look at an amazing concept some still believe offers the best hope for fending off-literally-an errant asteroid or comet that could wipe humankind from Earth.
Rating: 4
Summary: Point Summary of Proposed Theoretical Adjustments to Orion
Comment: 1.It is not a pusher-plate but a type of cannon that should contain the blast. The cannon could be described as a pusher-plate with walls on it, obviously to focus the energy released by the blast. Failing to focus the blast would also destroy many more satellites than is necessary (EPP) and is also very wasteful of the energy release. The number of explosions required to give propulsion would thus be much less.
2.The cannon is an ancient device but invented in a remarkable piece of history where the Chinese failed to develop its effective application. Unfortunately the English language does not have an alternative and less warlike term for a hollow tube with one end sealed by a pusher plate. America, the inventor of a new super "gun-powder", the atomic bomb, thus is repeating history by accidentally side-stepping the challenge of physical containment. The pusher-plate concept seeks to avoid the challenge of physical containment, a mistake. It is to be suggested "the inventor of new and overwhelming explosion will fail to develop its most significant application because of an over-whelmed sense of what the challenge of physical containment will involve".
3.Orion should never take off from the ground, but would be built in space. It would test the efficiency of our ability to push payload into space, but would limit all tests to outer space orbits and beyond where solar radiation is an existing malignant factor. As such it could be said to be a "green technology" in that malignant radiation releases in space are already a natural occurrence. The test apparatus being non-tether able in such an orbit would require from the very beginning a pilot and massive counter-thrust chemical engines to return the test for inspection.
4.deleted to fit word count.
5.It should not be assumed that the human being suffers the same intolerance to G force in space in exactly the same proportions as it is experienced on earth until real time data can be gathered. Acceleration is measured as a factor of time squared. Clearly relativity in space may work in our favour and allow travel under more G than is possible than on earth, something required if we were to reach the stars within an economic time period.
6.Our world without Project Orion is in danger of dispensing with the only natural theory of the non use of nuclear weapons. If we miss the point that such explosions have an economic potential for use in space, perhaps because we proceeded initially with an alternative theory of non-use so-called "MAD", then we are left at an evolutionary disadvantage. That a weapon is "horrible" is not an adequate theory of non-use, as many wars have inadvertently proved with other new technologies. That its use in war would mean a loss of its economic opportunity and value in space, is a significant deterrent. The Orion Project book by Dyson mentions NASA commenting it would be a useful way to dispose of or to consume fissile material. More than that it is an essential theory of non use of such materials and would hopefully when demand consumption in space increased to a certain level, call upon the dismantling of thermonuclear weapons to free up the atomic cores for use in the profitable area of space propulsion.
7.Project Orion once constructed in space, like the first cannons made in many pieces, would have the potential to actually lift or pull heavy objects into space. The bizarre "free energy" idea of the "sky hook" thus has a new and powerful application. If the cannon in orbit were to weigh 500 tonnes it would we might hope be able to lift 20 times its own weight, the dangling sky cables being supported by high altitude weather balloons. The environmental costs of currently pushing payload into space would thus be super ceded forever by a new capability to pull (as in a building site crane or harbour tug) 10,000 tonnes into orbit in one go by firing atomic explosions harmlessly away from earth at an angle to it.
8.The number of explosions estimated as needed for interplanetary travel by Orion is far too high. The frictionless, weightlessness of space means that following Newton's F=MA the acceleration would strictly not diminish over any amount of time. However again relativity would likely introduce some gradual diminishment of acceleration over the time period. The expectation of the requirement of one explosion a day in space would not be unreasonable until proven otherwise to maintain acceleration and hence gravity levels. This of course assumes that the pusher-plate has been given some containing walls and is not discharging energy willy-nilly across the heavens.
9.Occam's razor theorem highlights the essence of simplicity in invention. By determining to use a cannon/tube/canister rather than a pusher-plate with complicated hydraulics and ejection procedures, we can draw from a near millennium's wealth of experience in the development of the cannon to musket, then rifle. The use of cartridges and their subsequent ejection is likely to provide engineers with more insight on how an interplanetary craft can be efficiently powered, than the noble but essentially misguided attempt by Orioneers to re-write centuries of physical containment into riding shock waves. When it comes to the challenge of physical containment in space, it maybe like testing a light bulb in orbit, but we must face up to the challenge of physical containment in space. This route has seen many hundreds of years of development tests and failures since the dawn of the original gunpowder age. As such it is much more likely to result in ultimate success, rather than by re-inventing the wheel as "square" as the original Project Orion concept has with a "pusher-plate" sought to do.
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