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It is almost the epitome of steampunk romance. Launch an entire mid-20th century city and economy into space! And it might even work! But, yeah, you probably d

by jerf 1y ago

It is almost the epitome of steampunk romance. Launch an entire mid-20th century city and economy into space! And it might even work! But, yeah, you probably don't want to be launching these routinely. People generally badly underestimate the number of nuclear explosions that have been set off on Earth and overestimate the badness of nuclear explosions. Putting one or two of these into orbit might be justifiable. It's certainly not a bad emergency plan to have in your pocket in case of emergencies. But you still certainly wouldn't want an entire industry routinely lighting these things off. Still... the romance of it all...!

m4rtink 1y ago
While the Orion drive indeed works perfectly fine in atmosphere - or actually even better than in vacuum - no one says you need to launch them from the ground. While it would be preferable due to the immense weight, you can either lift it by conventional means or possibly build it from local resources in the long run. Once in space Orion is much less problematic & might be even easier to dock and maintain than normal nuclear thermal rockets, where the unshielded reactor will just put out insane amounts or radiation in all directions outside of its shadow shield. Correctly engineered pusher plate should be much easier to deal with.
- jerf 1y ago
  Having to lift them via some other means first eats away almost all their advantage. However I believe your point holds more generally for nuclear-based space propulsion. That we fear "NUKULAR!" by about two to three orders of magnitude more than is justified has kept us from having halfway decent space travel for at least a good two decades, most likely. There are a number of nuclear propulsion mechanisms that would make things like going to Mars halfway feasible instead of flights of fancy, or doing science missions in months instead of years or even decades, but people hear that you're thinking of lifting nuclear material into space and all rationality goes flying out the launch window. Nuclear is so bad that it basically reaches out through outright magic and guarantees explosions and there's no conceivable amount of preparation that could be done in people's minds to prevent the evil radiation!!!!1! from escaping and eating people's puppies. The funny thing is that even so quite a bit of nuclear material has been lifted into space, but hearing that doesn't make people go "oh, well, maybe it's less dangerous than I thought". I mean, I know this isn't the safest stuff in the world but I sure hope all that anti-nuclear propaganda in the 20th century actually did help prevent nuclear war because it has certainly had massively negative impacts in energy generation, environmental damage, space exploration, and who knows what else.
  - hermitcrab 1y ago
    Yes, unfortunately there always seems to be a massive knee-jerk reaction to anything with the word 'nuclear' in it. Consequently, many opportunities have been wasted.
  - hermitcrab 1y ago
    >I mean, I know this isn't the safest stuff in the world Best estimates are that Chernobyl and Fukushima killed maybe ~5,000 (including long term). The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure in China resulted in ~171,000 deaths.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  >no one says you need to launch them from the ground I also suggested a variation of this to him. But (IIRC) he said Orion was pretty pointless if you didn't use it to lift you out of Earth's gravity well.
hermitcrab 1y ago
He also made the interesting point that pretty much every big engineering project kills people.

by jerf 1y ago

m4rtink 1y ago

While the Orion drive indeed works perfectly fine in atmosphere - or actually even better than in vacuum - no one says you need to launch them from the ground. While it would be preferable due to the immense weight, you can either lift it by conventional means or possibly build it from local resources in the long run. Once in space Orion is much less problematic & might be even easier to dock and maintain than normal nuclear thermal rockets, where the unshielded reactor will just put out insane amounts or radiation in all directions outside of its shadow shield. Correctly engineered pusher plate should be much easier to deal with.

jerf 1y ago
Having to lift them via some other means first eats away almost all their advantage. However I believe your point holds more generally for nuclear-based space propulsion. That we fear "NUKULAR!" by about two to three orders of magnitude more than is justified has kept us from having halfway decent space travel for at least a good two decades, most likely. There are a number of nuclear propulsion mechanisms that would make things like going to Mars halfway feasible instead of flights of fancy, or doing science missions in months instead of years or even decades, but people hear that you're thinking of lifting nuclear material into space and all rationality goes flying out the launch window. Nuclear is so bad that it basically reaches out through outright magic and guarantees explosions and there's no conceivable amount of preparation that could be done in people's minds to prevent the evil radiation!!!!1! from escaping and eating people's puppies. The funny thing is that even so quite a bit of nuclear material has been lifted into space, but hearing that doesn't make people go "oh, well, maybe it's less dangerous than I thought". I mean, I know this isn't the safest stuff in the world but I sure hope all that anti-nuclear propaganda in the 20th century actually did help prevent nuclear war because it has certainly had massively negative impacts in energy generation, environmental damage, space exploration, and who knows what else.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  Yes, unfortunately there always seems to be a massive knee-jerk reaction to anything with the word 'nuclear' in it. Consequently, many opportunities have been wasted.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  >I mean, I know this isn't the safest stuff in the world Best estimates are that Chernobyl and Fukushima killed maybe ~5,000 (including long term). The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure in China resulted in ~171,000 deaths.
hermitcrab 1y ago
>no one says you need to launch them from the ground I also suggested a variation of this to him. But (IIRC) he said Orion was pretty pointless if you didn't use it to lift you out of Earth's gravity well.

hermitcrab 1y ago

He also made the interesting point that pretty much every big engineering project kills people.