Reddit reviews Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship

BBC made an hour long documentary about this project and it's well worth the watch. It's available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYoLcJuBtOw

There's also a book written by Dyson's son, although I have not yet read it so I can't attest to how good it is. This is it here: http://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805059857

Why I don't give a shit about coffee machine expenses, office furniture, etc:

Firstly, and this is important, Star Citizen is an extraordinarily challenging game to write from a technical perspective (even Derek says that they can't build don't have the tech for it). Extraordinary tech requires extraordinary engineers.

There is a long history of how various companies and colleges try to attract the best and the brightest. The first company that I know of which had to attract extraordinary engineers was General Atomic after WWII, which started working on Project Orion. Remember how your parents would give you pushes on the swing to make you go higher/further? Project Orion was basically that, except you're a spaceship and the push is really a nuclear explosion. Do you think I'm kidding? I'm not. So you're detonating hundreds of the most dangerous kind of bomb known at the time with specific timing in sequence: things have to go right. Therefore, you need the best engineers to work on it.

The facilities at the General Atomic campus were extensive, featuring an enormous library in the center that was shaped to be the same size of the spaceship they were trying to build. Other details can be found in George Dyson's book, but suffice it to say that General Atomic was able to recruit many of the Project Manhattan veterans because of some of these benefits and amenities: not all decisions come down to salary.

Google is a much more recent example; like General Atomic, Google wants the best. How does Google attract and retain the best engineers? Perks are a big, and well-documented, part of that. Just look at all these articles about the perks that Google employees get: https://www.google.com/search?q=general+atomic&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=google+perks.

Colleges do the same thing to try to get the best students to attend: they have large campuses with beautiful architecture. A state-of-the-art athletic center with more racketball and squash courts than would ever be used. A program to allow you to rent Picassos to hang in your dorm room. Hell, the school I work at has a parents association whose sole job is to bring the teachers lunch/breakfast once a month. I'd have left to be closer to friends/family long ago if it weren't for this (and other similar perks).

It's really clear to me that CIG is trying to do exactly this. I'm really surprised Derek hasn't mentioned this, but they have a full kitchen in the new California studio. Producers constantly talk about how they're working to make the engineer's lives better, sometimes that involves running errands or getting dinner. The mural on the wall helps people to take pride in their work (and is beautiful besides). A nice coffee machine and elegant furniture are ways to retain the amazing employees you have. That's part of the cost of hiring the best. Can you go overboard with it? Of course. Have they? Consider that this $20,000 coffee machine is less than 0.02% of their total crowdfunded number. They can afford it. And the employees deserve it.

Welcome to the real world, Derek. You can't just throw money at people and expect them to be inspired and give you their best. And you certainly can't do it when you're paying these people less than what they would get paid at other companies, no matter how awesome your project is.

This seems like a fine time to share this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Sv5y6iHUM

It doesn't answer your question, but that was already answered.

Also there is book on the topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805059857

George Dyson talks about his Dad, Freeman's work on the Orion also His book on project Orion



Freeman Dyson's 1968 paper detailing the Orion Nuclear Ramjet

"Our plan was to send [manned] ships to Mars and Venus at a fraction of the cost of the Apollo program".

There would have been 150 people in a project Orion ship.

If we had utilised this technology we would have colonised Mars and the Moon by 1980.

Interview with Freeman Dyson about the Orion

Humanity will not become a space-faring species with chemical rockets alone.

This could have been the gateway to a real extra-terrestrial future for humanity

He's a neat guy. I really enjoyed Project Orion.

The Case for Mars is a good plan for how to settle Mars.

Project Orion by George Dyson is about the nuclear rocket program.

There is also a very good book about it by George Dyson who is Freeman Dyson's son.

https://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805059857

It is actually a plausible way to travel to another Star quickly.

I forgot to mention, but I live in Belgium. Even used, the cheapest I can find is over $100 :(
(That's amazon.de, they ship to Belgium too.)

You will have to take my word for it. My library is a mess and I can't find my copy of "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship"

Freeman Dyson explained how this result was exciting and started the line of research that started the design of this system. He indicated it created a stagnation layer that prevented the plasma from directly touching the metal. The only issue was radiative heat transfer and that was solved by making the plate a large heatsink and lowering the duty cycle of the impinging plasma.

> about the acceleration you will get from big bombs out of the atmosphere.

Is not correct. They intended to use relatively small yield "pulse units" (they preferred to not use the word bomb). These were to be about 1-2 kilotons. Not even up the Fat Man or Little Boy yields. And even smaller, like 200 tons in initial take off from earth's surface.

A good read is the book "Project Orion" by George Dyson.

>Nuclear explosions have somewhat different effects out of an atmosphere

The propulsion was going to be from the plasma of the bomb casing hitting the pusher plate and the ablation of the oil layer pumped onto it. They were even planning on nuclear shaped charges to focus as much of this plasma toward the pusher plate as possible.

I thought it was around 20% c from the book for the Orion Project max speed. Did you read the book?

http://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805059857/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449250466&sr=1-1&keywords=orion+project

Looks like most websites reference 10% of c as the max speed. Wish I still had the book to look up what the scientists calculations were.

As others have pointed out, it won't work in space. But that doesn't mean they hadn't considered nuclear engines in space. Project Orion was a concept where atomic bomb explosions would be used to propel a spacecraft at incredible speeds. Famed physicist Freeman Dyson was a co-leader of the project. His son, George Dyson (a friend of mine) wrote a fascinating book about it called Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship.

Some crazy shit, man.

Fly Me to the Moon, about non standard spacecraft trajectories has been sitting on my shelf, think thats gonna be the next book I read.
Mary Roach writes great nonfiction, but it tends to be more biology/anthropology.
Project Orion, a book about proposed nuclear powered space craft was excellent as well.
Lunar Base Handbook is more just a collection of papers, but its fascinating.

reading Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson this week.

>The improbable story of the wildest idea-a space craft powered by hydrogen bombs-to come out of the space race.

Some of the scientists who invented the atomic bomb, after that was done, worked on some wild ideas at General Atomics in San Diego. One of those ideas was for a spacecraft propelled by a series of small nuclear explosions. Seriously. A bunch of little atomic bombs going off in sequence in the back of the craft. They had the shielding all worked out, the required thrust, etc, in some detail. Could actually work for spacecraft leaving from earth orbit and provide a way to get to, say, Mars, and back in a relatively short time. George Dyson, the son of one of the scientists, wrote an interesting book (still available) about the project if you want to follow up on the details.

You might be interested in Project Orion and this book about it.