> and showed great promise As per the Wikipedia article there were numerous unresolved technical issues and really exciting failure modes. But a big 'no' was t

> and showed great promise As per the Wikipedia article there were numerous unresolved technical issues and really exciting failure modes. But a big 'no' was the massive nuclear fallout resulting from each (successful) launch, let alone the ones that failed. Larry Niven's novel Footfall [0] (spoiler...) involves an interesting treatment of an Orion-style spaceship. The massive problems are tolerated in the face of an existential threat to Humanity unless a massive spacecraft can be launched into space. And very conveniently, it works perfectly first time, with no testing of the bomb engine mechanism, which seems a tad fanciful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall